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CESARE BORGIA 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

THE TOY CART 



BT THE SAME WRITER 

Poems {Collected Edition in Two Volumes). 1902. 

An Introduction to the Study of Browning. 1886. 

1906. 
Aubrey Beardsley. 1898. 1905. 
The Symbolist Movement in Literature. 1899. 
Plays, Acting, and Music. 1903. 
Cities. 1903. 

Studies in Prose and Verse. 1904. 
Spiritual Adventures. 1905. 

The Fool of the World and Other Poems. 1906. 
Studies in Seven Arts. 1906. 
William Blake. 1907. 
Cities of Italy. 1907. 

The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. 1909. 
Knave of Hearts. 1913. 
Figures of Several Centuries. 1916. 
Tragedies. 1916. 
Tristan and Iseult. 1917. 
Cities and Sea Coasts and Islands. 1918. 



CESARE BORGIA 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

THE TOY CART 



BY 

ARTHUR SYMONS 




NEW YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

1920 






Copyright, 1920 
Brentano's 



THE-PLXMPTON-PKESS 
NORWOOD • MASS •U'S«A 



NOV 131920 
©C1,A601776 






TO 
ROBIN DE LA CONDAMINE 



CONTENTS 

Cesare Borgia 3 

IsEULT OF Brittany 75 

The Toy Cart 91 



CESARE BORGIA 

A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT 
By ARTHUR SYMONS 



THE PERSONS 

CESAKE BORGIA, Cardinal of Valencia 
SANCIA, Princess of Aragon 
MiCHELOTTO, Ccsarc's Servant 
LUCREZIA BORGIA, the Pope's Daughter 
GIOVANNI BORGIA, Dukc of Sandia 

POPE ALEXANDER VI 

ASSASSINS 

VANNOzzA CATANEi, the Pope's Mistress 

IMPERIA 

SCENE: Rome, June, 1497. 



CESAEE BORGIA 

SCENE ONE 

A Room of CESARE in the Vatican 
Enter cesare and sancia 

SANCIA 

Why is our flesh more cruel than man's love? 

CESARE 

There is no love that can outmeasure love. 

SANCIA 

I only know I am a tortured thing 
And none of all the casuists of souls 
Can set me dancing in the naked air. 

CESARE 

I am no Casuit, nor are my nerves tortured 
As evil spirits are. 

SANCIA 

An evil spirit 

Burns in you, Cesare. See, how it burns in me! 

[3] 



CESARE BORGIA 



CESARE 



Hate not the Beast, that laughs out of the Flesh! 
Why do you touch your burning web of hair? 

SANCIA 

Do I? Sheer nerves, my dear! Rome's hot enough 
For our blood's heat to be June's heat. I beat 
My feet on the floor, as if one dances. 

CESARE 

Sancia, 

What is obscure and inevitable in ourselves 

Comes not from dancing nor from dreaming: dreams 

Are the mirror of our consciousness; the dance 

The rhythm of our being : but our Fate 

Entangles us in a net we can't escape from. 

SANCIA 

This network that knots my hair — why subtilise 
Beyond it? 

CESARE 

To mock mine own illusions. 

There's something monstrous in your kind of beauty. 
Yet Beauty, when accursed, becomes less monstrous, 
And so more poisonous. 

SANCIA 

Am I a poison-flower 

Grown in a soil only weeds grew in before 

Some Satan planted my seed? 

[4] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Start not, Sancia, 

At the shadow the setting sun casts on me — the shadow 

Of a mere leaf in the wind. 

SANCIA 

And if I start? 

I tell you, Cesare, there's a wind in my heart 

That will not let me rest; there are great wings 

Of birds that beat against the winds; storms 

Everlasting and the unresting waters; loves 

That are more drowsy than the bees at noon 

That have trafficked on the heath and sucked the 

heather: 
And I am all of these and none of these. 

CESARE 

Find out the dancing measures in our blood 
And we'll not blush'. 

SANCIA 

If blushes do become you — 
Blush. 

CESARE 

I am neither sad nor am I sorry 
We thus have met. Sadness befits not love; 
But since the moon is far and your strange face 
No fairer than the moon's, let all the winds 
Invade our spirits; but, when we have drunk wine, 
Always the dregs remain. 

SANCIA 

Of all sad songs 

This is the saddest men ever sang. Come now, 

[5] 



CESARE BORGIA 

There are no ghosts to go along with us; 
And you that have so many mistresses 
May tire of me that am your Sancia, 
Your Sancia of the minute. 

CESAKE 

There's no jesting-time 

From this till midnight and when midnight's over 
The jests begin: we shall have some wondrous jesting 
When craft enters your eyes : you have more craft 
Than the street-girls in Naples. 

SANCIA 

You think of — what? 

CESARE 

Of nothing. 

SANCIA 

Nay, of Giovanni. 

CESARE 

And if I choose to love him? As one tries 
To love a thing one hates when one's in bed 
And so turns on his pillow and forgets 
And, waking, might remember either dream. 
You might as well ask of a burning flame 
To turn aside from burning not in love 
The wood next it on the hearth. 



SANCIA 

Do you fear God? 

[6] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

I use his name, I neither fear nor love 
God, more than mine own Sire; who, sick at heart. 
Fears God; and, with heart at ease after our revels, 
Loves God. Our flesh must sleep to live. I sweep 
Certain things to sideways, thus! 

He unsheathes his dagger, turns his wrist and 

pierces a hole in the wall. 

SANCIA 

Madness and nerves. 

In these I praise you, Cesare; as for Lucrezia, 

I honour her; yea, I am honourless, 

And yet I love Lucrezia. 

CESARE 

One must love her 

In her strange tragic beauty; fires of Carthage 
Burn in her eyes and Matho makes her mad 
Because she has given him wine, and madness lies 
Wherever poisoned love is mixed with hate. 

SANCIA 

There may be treason in you against me, Cesare! 

CESARE 

You might think twice before you think to say it 
And I think thrice before I answer you. 

SANCIA 

You cannot hurt me much, not much, Cesare, 
That burn two ways at once. 

[7] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 



One mine own way? 



SANCIA 



Perhaps : but that's no matter. Let it pass 
As stolen kisses. We are not here for nothing. 
I swear to you with all body, Cesare ! 
We are watched, we are watched. 



CESARE 



The Devil watches all things, 

Waking and sleeping. He outwatches God 

Whose heaven is not more lonely than his hell. 



SANCIA 



Night for the blood of animals, and the day 

For men to crush each other; certain hours 

For strategy : then the blood-beaten pulses 

Of the world — ours, that is — as it reels into night. 

Or staggers into day through the red mists. 

CESARE 

These shining wings of words as gaudy poppies 
That flame at noon serve you. 

SANCIA 

As for Giulia, 

I never saw such hair in all my life, 

Pure red gold hair down to her feet when she undoes it. 

CESARE 

Satan my father knows what beauty is. 

[8] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SANCIA 

So Giulia, the adulteress : what else 
In this so moral Rome? 

CESARE 

Why, what else? Giulia 

Holds in her little hands the spiritual head 

Of the world's Church. 

SANCIA 

Purple paid for her shame. 

CESARE 

It marvels me 

You never loved Giovanni's fair bedfellow — 

One sleeps with shame — Maria Enriquez. 

SANCIA 

Love her or like her. Leave the creature alone. 
Am I not Sancia, Princess of Aragon? 
And who is she? Some say a household rat, 
But I say no. Yet I have a mind, I say, 
To let some honest creature such as her 
Stumble into a deep grave. 

CESARE 

Leave alone honesty. 

SANCIA 

You make me laugh. Make me a toy. Cesare, 
I'm a wicked child — such children love strange toys; 
And mine must be a cruel-featured idol 

[9] 



CESARE BORGIA 

Made after Artemis who hangs on the horns 
Of the Crescent moon, mocking her own image 
As she swung in the wind there. 

CESARE 

Satan's child you are not, 
In spite of what I might be. Satan makes 
Strange mistakes sometimes; and he gave me gifts 
God never thought of. 

SANCIA 

What gifts had he to give you, 
Cesare? 

CESARE 

Mysterious, merciless, monstrous things, 

And tales of those who had played chess on many nights. 

Waiting and waiting for the stroke of a sword. 

SANCIA [^slowly] 

You mean, there may be playing of chess to-night. 
Or next night, to be decided by the sword.? 

CESARE 

Nay, I mean nothing. When shall I sleep with you 
Next? 

SANCIA 

When the half-moon shines over Rome. 

CESARE 

The night after to-morrow. 

Enter michelotto 
I never sent for you. 

[10] 



CESARE BORGIA 

MICHELOTTO 



Pardon me, my lord. 



CESARE 



Pardon? You mean you have strangled — what do I 

know? 
Some lewder rogue than you are. 

MICHELOTTO 

I have not strangled 
Anyone. Only His Holiness the Pope 
Bade me say he desires you come to him. 
The case being urgent. 

CESARE 

Urgent? What do you mean? 

MICHELOTTO 

My words have no other meaning. 

CESARE 

Sancia, 

I leave you in the care of — Michelotto ! 

Exit CESARE 



SANCIA 

Your name's more terrible than your reputation. 

MICHELOTTO 

Mere stricken sounds upon a hollow drum 
A zany plays before a mountebank. 

[11] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SANCIA 

An elevated kind of criminal 
That has the knavery of evils? 

MICHELOTTO 

Nearer the mark. 

SANCIA 

Are you not Cesare's damned soul? 

MICHELOTTO 

For him I'd dare damnation ! 

SANCIA 

I admire you. 

I have some hates that hang about my throat — 

No hates that you have strangled. 

MICHELOTTO 

I strangle no hates 

But I am paid to strangle hateful men. 

SANCIA 

Part of your business, of this trade of yours. 
And then — assassination ! 

MICHELOTTO 

Assassination ! Princess ! 

SANCIA 

So did Aegisthus, the hateful, helping the hateful 
Clytemnestra, in the Tale that's on all tongues. 
A murder says one — a squabble before supper. 

[12] 



CESARE BORGIA 

MICHELOTTO 

These were old wicked mountains in the air 

That had the abhorred conscience of some murder. 

And, what am I beside these? I exist. 

SANCIA 

"Naked as brown feet of unburied men," 

Someone said that; it means that burial 

May not be needed. Ah, you chafe at this ! 

I speak of Cesare; yea, even at this time, 

This most keen joint of time, when there's confusion 

That might turn to worse than ruin, even God's wrath 

Might turn not back, spare nothing: I ask of you: 

Who knows what Cesare means .f^ 



I know not. 
You know not? 



MICHELOTTO 

SANCIA [^slowlyJi 

MICHELOTTO 



Nay: only the benediction that he gave me 
One night after the wine. 

Re-enter cesare 

CESARE 

I caught one word. Enough: the Zodiac's changed! 

Exit MICHELOTTO 

Does God forgive ever? 

SANCIA 

God never. Do you forgive? 

[13] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Can I forgive? Nay, in me all my desires 
Burn up each part and parcel of my life 
As if my feet trod down the infernal fires. 
And the Pope tires me. 

Enter lucrezia 

LUCREZIA 

Does the Pope tire you, Cesare? 

You start: your colour runs up like a maid's. 

CESARE 

I would I were one; hey, you startled me, 
As one who has stolen a peach and drops it. The 
heat's intense. 

LUCREZIA 

Give me your fan, Sancia, I dropt mine. You laugh? 
Thanks. I were fain there were a toneless storm 
Murmuring, with wind behind it. How my heart beats. 
I can't keep quiet. Am I not beautiful. 
Sancia? 

SANCIA 

Beautiful. 

LUCREZIA 

She says it, Cesare, 

Between her lips, just like some dainty word 

You think might please a caged bird. The bird 

Nods its head and hates its cage and you. 

I must hate someone. There's no one here to hate. 

Where's Giovanni? 

CESARE 

He may be here to-night. 

I saw him last enter Imperia's house 

[14] 



CESARE BORGIA 

As I turned a corner. She leaned from a window; vine 
Crawled on her naked back; and she had seen him 
And laughed as some man caught her by her arms 
Behind her in the room. Such are bought kisses. 

LUCREZIA 

Bought kisses from a painted creature? There's 

No symbol of the vine nor of the wine 

But of the window and her naked back. 

And then you hear her cry on God: "O hell! 

What's left but hell, when I am but a name, 

Who had such beauty, to be whirled with wind. 

Hot wind in hell's intense heat? And all my spices 

And all my vices gone ! And I that loved 

Men's kisses more than life; to have come to shame. 

And so die shamed." Cesare, you hear her cry! 

CESARE 

So might Imperia when death comes on her 
And she lies wasted, and her beauty's vain 
As her face seen in her mirror. 

LUCREZIA 

I say to you, poured 

On the ground like untasted water, after the wine 
Is tasted, such beauty might be, when desire 
Desires desire and that desire's denied. 

SANCIA 

Hopeless, estranged, unchanged. 

LUCREZIA 

What do you mean? 

[15] 



CESARE BORGIA 



SANCIA 



Nay, I mean nothing; any more than sleep 
Tells ever what it means. 



LUCREZIA 

To be estranged 

Is what I want, who want so little else. 

CESARE 

So Uttle else? 

LUCREZIA 

Do you think I want the world? 

I want — I know not what; for all I have 

Is given me : life and youth and health and beauty — 

And riches and jewels and rings; these clothes I wear 

This fan, not mine, I take from Sancia. Nay, 

One's beauty is one's beauty. 

SANCIA 

Do you love, Lucrezia, 
Giovanni? 

LUCREZIA 

How you startle me, Sancia dear ! 
My blood stirs not at his name; only this fan 
Trembles a little : or is it the wind in the room 
That stirs it? In so much heat, how hot the wind, 
June's wind. Giovanni? Shameless you are, Sancia, 
Who ought to know — 

SANCIA 

Who ought to know too much? 

[16] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Giovanni sacrifices to the rebellious angels. 

LUCREZIA 

How this heat tires me ! There are nets to weave 
Out of soft sleep and subtler scents to snare 
Youth that is so much younger than the world. 

SANCIA 

"Rebellious angels?" So, one sacrifices, 
Still, to the fallen gods? 



CESARE 



Shed blood, my Sancia, 
May still be sacrificed. 

LUCREZIA 

In some cunning way, 
As look you, out of this my sinful soul. 
On those my sinful lips when, being vexed, 
They bite the blood? 

CESARE 

A goodly bait to men. 

LUCREZIA 

God send me a better bait ! These Spaniards, now. 
Where are they? 

CESARE 

They live with me. 



[17] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

They keep me waiting. An evil genius 

Presided at my tragic birth, yet am I 

Evil? My life shall be tragic; Spanish blood 

Runs ever hotly in us, Cesare ! 

I know I shall be a mockery in men's ears 

In women's mouths a scorn; a windy laughter, 

A fire that flamed, a sail in a grey rain : 

And this shall be my Dirge. 

"Of what is't fools make such vain keeping? 

Sin, their conception, their birth, weeping? 

Their life, a general mist of error. 

Their death, a hideous storm of terror." 

Enter Giovanni 

GIOVANNI [^sings mockingly] 

"Their death, a hideous storm of terror!" 
I came light-hearted; now you dash my mirth 
As from Gian the jester might have in Verone 
At Can La Scala's Court, where Dante turned 
The fool's jest to a witty pun on words. 

CESARE 

These are but senseless cries out of your mouth. 
Only, I seem to see a shadow slanting. 
That lengthens, and is thrusting out a foot 
That might be yours. Come you, aside with me. 

Exeunt 



[18] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SCENE TWO 

In the Vatican 
Enter pope Alexander and cesare borgia 

THE POPE 

There is a monstrous error in the world: 
Who shall deliver us from too much love 
Save the sunderer of hearts? This is not love. 
But some horrible conspiracy of things 
That casts one's days out like departing guests. 

CESARE 

If there is anyone you love with rage, 
Who but Giulia Farnese? Her eyes and mouth 
Deny and invite. They say she is Christ's Bride, 
But when she dances she lures one: when she laughs 
She is the image of one who stands at the door 
Of a Tavern giving on a den of thieves. 

THE POPE 

I would that I were moral, Cesare, 

That know myself abnormal; know that vice 

Is simply vice, and, if there exists virtue 

Here in these hot streets where the wanton women — 

CESARE 

Go painted like the idolatrous images 

That worship only the clang of metal; those 

Have but brief lives, and thieve the lives of men. 

[19] 



CESARE BORGIA 

THE POPE 

Thieves that steal forth at night: none shall requite them. 
We are dramatic; poised on a point of time 
Not even poisonous. Last night that hot feast-room 
When Lucrezia was so pale, so strangely pale, 
And Sancia flushed with wine and lust of the flesh 
Stared down Giovanni with her treacherous eyes 
Where Vannozza was not, strike on all my senses 
As if the door of a furnace had been suddenly 
Opened in that brief, speechless minute, showing 
Glimpses of hell, and then as suddenly shut. 
And yet the feast went on. 

CESARE 

The feast went on. 

I had no fever, thought of no such things; 

A conjuror might juggle in his hands 

And so deceive you; there's no such deception 

Left to us now. 

THE POPE 

None, none ! Are we not too naked 

In all men's sight? Yea, God hath fashioned us 

For other uses than these, for other means. 

CESARE 

Do we not play into each other's hands.'* 

THE POPE 

I have no rival. 

CESARE 

Nay, you have no rival. 

So far you hold all your vices well in hand: 

[20] 



CESARE BORGIA 

So far. I say no more. We have had content 
Content with our own selves. I say to you 
We shall soon move pity and terror. 

THE POPE 

One must act, 
Cesare. 

CESARE 

And, after having mimed and acted, 
God's to be reckoned with. 



THE POPE 

Sublime you are not; 

Shall God have ever pity of us, Cesare? 

CESARE 

Site, if I see not as God or Satan might 
Myself, I find you, godless on your throne, 
A splendid strangling serpent of strange cunning 
Image of the pride, defiance, revolt and sin 
That makes the axles of the live earth turn — 
Coiling around some semblances of good, 
And venomously round semblances of evil. 

THE POPE 

So it might be, Cesare, so it might be. 

I am I, yet I know not what I am 

Some say of me — they may be right or wrong — 

That in mine own self I possess the ignoblest 

Vices whose heads have risen since Satan fell — 

Crowned serpent of the nether clefts of Hell — 

Out of the heaven he hated. 

[211 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

A word in your ear, 

Sire. Pardon me, but has not Giovanni 
Accused you, accused me, with strange menaces 
Of incest with Lucrezia — hes more damnable 
Than truths on a Uar's tongue? 

THE POPE 

I curse not him 

Yet. Such menaces are the DeviFs own 

Inventions for the credulous ears of those 

Whose tongues do lick up poison. It has been known 

The pavement sinks under a woman's feet; 

It has been known that limbs are easily 

Contaminated; and that some, being foully tortured 

Have eaten strange flesh. Such prodigious things 

Breed more prodigious mixtures. 

CESARE 

More prodigious 

Than these there shall not be. Mere menaces 
Shall make us more merciless. Sweet Christ of mine, 
What shall I do for your sake.^* Some smell of blood 
Some dust that hurts me, some wind's thunderstorm. 
Some puddled rain-shallows : more teasing things 
Than these that bite and sting one : just for her 
Sake, Lucrezia's. Sire, her life's too flame-like 
And her desires consume her. 

THE POPE 

In you and me 
Lives a live cloud and a more living flame. 
Which flame shall rise, rise, to consume the cloud? 
Which cloud, which flame, shall beat the other back? 

[22] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Let flesh and blood make answer. I have none. 

THE POPE 

Men shall cast hard stones at me, drag me alive 

Before they think to slay me, in God's sight 

These being shameless; they have eaten poisonous 

words 
And are not choked withal. Nay, I may drink 
Be made drink, the Lord's cup of derision. Yet shall 

not I 
Die by these means. For having made me man 
He shall not slay me utterly, being his Pope, 
And His anointed. 

CESARE 

Look you between your feet, 

Lest a snare take them though the ground be good. 
Death will have nought of altar and altar-song 
Although a man go cloaked up to the chin. 

THE POPE 

Verily I may be smitten by other gods 
That are to me most alien. 

CESARE 

I bid you hold 
Keen danger by the skirt, grip hands with him. 

THE POPE 

Yea, one Creed chokes another as gross weeds 
That hate the flowers they mix with, hideously. 

[23] 



CESAKE BORGIA 

To move men's minds to travail: that's the word 
I want. Might I but have the Spirit of God! 

CESARE 

Yea, the Almighty. Soon shall come the time 
When we shall stand, naked, and face to face 
Before no throne, nor Satan's throne nor God's. 

THE POPE 

Then shall the Vatican tremble, filled with clouds 
Contagious. 

CESARE 

Time comes not on leaden wings. 
Yet on a certain night, when no sun shines 
And moonlight's pale, and we shall only hear 
Men stir uneasily as in sleep that pace 
The Piazza, and there enter, insolently. 
The Wind and air of night (the air we breathe. 
The wind bat-like) and every corner of our souls. 
Corner and coign and cranny shall be filled 
With an ominous sense of deeds that have been done 
And undone deeds, and find no way to grope 
Anywhere out of the nets of guilt and sin. 
Of crime and blood-shedding: then shall the Wheel of 

Fortune 
Turn in the void, and, on one turning wheel. 
No Christ fall off his Crucifix, but the image 
Of the Temptress of our Sins, pale as in Naples, 
Sancia, with painted cheeks, ripe for hell's fire. 

Exeunt 



[24] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SCENE THREE 

The Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican 
Enter cesake and lucrezia 

CESARE 

If God exists, then I exist; my Sire 
Also, with length of years, unnatural nights, 
Dreams abominable, fleshly desires that make 
His very limbs ache; for with blood like his — 
Hot as the African sun that burns on Spain 
Over Elche and Valencia — Arab blood 
That makes one mad; I ask you, Lucrezia, 
What more can any desire in any father 
Than we who have Christ's Vicar for our Sire? 

LUCREZIA 

Why not? We have all we want; but wanting means 

More than we want. Our birth's enravelling 

We must leave to Nature. Why is it I don't love Rome? 

Because I hate not to be wholly Spanish, 

Not to have been born in Spain, and not to have had 

Raven tresses: blue black, lustrous, coiled. 

Such as they dip in a fountain in Cordova — 

Josef a, Dolores; and they sit in the sun there 

And drink the fierce sky in. 

CESARE 

You ask me why? 
Because our flaming hearts burn inward, burn not 
Outward, to escape the intolerable pain 
Of their reclusion. 

[25] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

We are like stormy sunsets 
That have no sunrises. Have we not seen in visions 
Christ's blood stream in the firmament? 

CESARE 

And God's wrath 

In painted pictures. Yet we were born in April. 

LUCREZIA 

I love lilies more than the roses; roses 

Burn in my cheeks, my skin is white as lilies. 

And yet I sigh for Venus and Adonis, 

He the sweet Knight she loved, and she the wanton 

That let him perish; I sigh more for Atalanta, 

That strange pure virgin, stainless save for the wild 

blood 
She shed — the boar's — for whose sake Meleager 
Perished, Althea's virginal son, in Calydon. 

CESARE 

Will you pray for me, Lucrezia, if I am suddenly 
Slain? 

LUCREZIA 

Pray for your soul, I might; as for your body, 
No. 

CESARE 

How your eyes are upon me! Stir not madness 
In this hot blood that aches for loveliness, 
Yours more than other's. 

[26] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

I cannot love you more 
Than I have always loved you, Cesare. 
And, now I love you as you love me: yet 
All my love is not wholly yours. 

CESARE 

You love? 

LUCREZIA 

Vanozzal. 

CESARE 

And the Pope? 

LUCREZIA 

No more nor less. 
If I think well of the manner of my loving 
To him-ward: and I would the winds and waters 
Washed me as clean in certain men's reports 
As I am pure in nature. 

CESARE 

Heed nothing now! 



LUCREZIA 



Cesare, 



We have drunk the wine of love as lovers have 
Ever since love itself created love. This drunk. 
We never are the same. Shame be to me 
If ever I forget you or forgive you! 

CESARE 

Why, you suspect me? 

[27] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

If I do suspect you, 
Why not? 

CESARE 

Why not? Have I done you wrong? 

LUCREZIA 

Much wrong. 

CESARE 

More than Giovanni? 

LUCREZIA 

O, much less, much less. 

CESARE 

You know that I am evil? 

LUCREZIA 

Evil and cruel : one 
None ever fathomed; you are unfathomable. 
Deep as the sea in storms. In wronging me 
You wrong yourself. 

CESARE 

How wonderful you are 
Lucrezia ! I could kiss these feet of yours 
Now — if it were worth kneeling. 

LUCREZIA 

So you say. 
Who have knelt often to Sancia. 

[28] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Sancia? 

LUCREZIA 

Sancia. 

CESARE 

You are most fair and fearful, feminine, 

Not faultless, but you breathe warm heights of the air. 

And the extreme heavens find favour in your sight. 

LUCREZIA 

Feminine I am, not fearful; fair, not fierce; 
And when I breathe the warm air things ruinous 
Pass in my vision: I see the realms of the Dead — 
Not the extreme heavens — where Faustina dances 
With Helen, and the dark gods of Hades laugh. 

CESARE 

Were I in Hades I would dance with them! 

LUCREZIA 

You mean with Sancia? 

CESARE 

With Faustina. 

LUCREZIA 

I see: 
With living beauty in hell rather than with living 
Beauty on earth. We spoke of wine. Drink this. 

She offers him wine 
It might be, for all I know, made of hell's fire. 

[29] 



CESARE BORGIA 

Why do you turn so pale? As if some stupor 
Had fallen on you, and hell lay just beneath 
The Vatican, and a dead man's face stared up 
Out of the depths? 

CESARE dashes the glass of wine on the floor with a 
nervous gesture; the wine stains the floor like blood, 

CESARE [^slowly2 

Out of some stupor? Lucrezia? 

I have seen no dead man's face; we are not in hell; 

I know that I am pale and you are not. 

There lies the blood of the wine that I have spilt, 

And there it shines between us; blood turned wine: 

Wine that no man shall drink; blood that no man 

Shall ever taste. 

LUCREZIA 

This is most strange in you. 

CESARE 

Forgive me for what I have said. 

LUCREZIA 

Of me? To me? 
Against me? 

CESARE 

Against you, never; of you, perhaps; 
To you, too often. 

LUCREZIA 

Nay, not often enough. 
Listen ! I think I hear the Pope's footsteps. 

[30] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Let's share him. Some are of the Devil's crew 
And none from the Ghetto steered them. 

The POPE enters 

THE POPE 

I catch your word. 

You know for certain what one says in Spain 
Sounds in Rome just as jarring in one's ears 
As someone coughing when one hangs him up. 

LUCREZIA 

There's much more evil here 
Than one supposes. 

THE POPE 

Evil, why not evil? This insolent heat 

Is over; but I have a quickened sense 

In my imagination; some hollow heat 

Of hell returning makes this room turn red. 

Now to supplant some evil: as when the Tiber 

Turns hideous with dead drifting things upon it. 

CESARE 

There is between its banks a troublous tide — 
A tide tongued with windless words, that takes 
None of the laughing colours of our streets. 

LUCREZIA 

"Dead drifting things": that makes me shudder; 

somehow 
This day has been most evil; women's praise 
Is lost on me : I am thrown into some humour. 

[31] 



CESARE BORGIA 

THE POPE 

Some fever in the blood, a girl's mere malady 

That leaves her, laughing; something under the girdle 

Perhaps too warm. 

CESARE 

Now he jests cruelly 
Yea, but blood slain shall not be healed again 
Nor heat the forsaken flesh. 

Enter giovanni 

GIOVANNI 

You jibe at flesh? 

CESARE 

Nay, at forsaken flesh; and blood unhealed. 

GIOVANNI 

You are too keen on blood. 

LUCREZIA 

Giovanni mine, 
There's little love between you. 

GIOVANNI 

Was there ever? 

CESARE 

Was there ever? 

LUCREZIA 

You ring the echo like unchristened, bells 
On a Cathedral that some demon pulls. 
Giovanni, there was laughter on your lips 
When your lips smote on Cesare's. 

[32] 



CESARE BORGIA 

GIOVANNI 

He checked mine, 

Lucrezia, lie checks mine always now. 

CESAKE 

Now, 

Now, more than ever? 

GIOVANNI [with irony'] 
More than ever, Cesare. 

THE POPE 

Cease, cease your words, O my evil sons ! 
Certainly mine, as certainly not of God's 
Begetting, why do you tear at each other so, 
Not literally, but with more hateful words 
Than hate might utter? Satan, had he had sons. 
His might have fought no less, for less just reasons, 
Than you, my Giovanni, than you, my Cesare. 

CESARE 

We may be of Satan's seed, we are seed of our sire. 
Seed of Vannozza. 

THE POPE 

I think there is a menace in the air; 
I feel it in every fibre of my being. 

LUCREZIA 

In heU are beds of perfume and sad sound. 
And there with nerve and bone one multiplies 
Extreme pleasure out of an extreme pain; 
And aU the gateways smoke with fumes of flames 
And all the serpents hiss and lift their heads. 

[33] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Giovanni, you must know one has been in hell — 
Take you deep note of this — where are shaken sighs 
In that uncertain state where women walk 
Along the streets with loosened hair and girdles 
Unbound and eyes that frighten you: the Sun 
Ceases and the stars wonder, and all Hell 
Is filled from end to end with endless shame. 

GIOVANNI 

There is a terror in the roots of my hair 
And a certain seething fire beneath my head 
And all my flesh grows faint and feverish 
And there's an anguish in my very bones. 
What God, what Devil, shall deliver me 
Out of the hands of these mine enemies .^^ 

CESARE 

Shall Gods bear bit and bridle, fool, of men? 
Can any fool baffle Satan and God? 
For all these rest now as lots that yet undrawn 
Lie in the lap of the unknown hour. 

THE POPE 

Cry not so much, Giovanni, 

Words far too feverish. On this Crucifix 

I have upon me I bid you cease your raving! 

GIOVANNI 

Do I grovel? Am I a thing made to spit on, 
A thing for shame to spit on? 

[34] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE [^aside] 

This night hell's lips 
Shall open and shut once. 

LUCREZIA 

Giovanni, why 
This monstrous mockery that has no name: 
No name, say I? as if our very name 
Were rent as carrion by the vulturous beaks 
That feed on fame and soil it. 

THE POPE 

Will you hear me, Giovanni? 

Were but Vannozza here that she might hear me 

Last night I dreamed — God help me! — that I climbed 

Infinite spirals that touched not hell nor heaven 

But changed to ladders, every rung of them 

Dropt away from me as my feet felt them, then 

I fell, I fell, sucked under a slimy floor 

Where serpents crawled, coiled, curdled; and then down 

Into annihilation. Yet I heard over me 

The moon's evil laugh, the sea-waves' hiss; 

Then soul and body parted at the stroke 

And out of an infinitely sharp suspense 

I woke. 

GIOVANNI 

God's mercy! May I never dream 
The like of that! Such dreams forebode much evil. 

CESARE 

God's mercy, say you? Ask not that of Him. 
I shall not tell you the evil dream I had 

[35] 



CESARE BORGIA 

For if three dream bad dreams one of us three 
Has life's hand on his left, death's on his right. 

GIOVANNI 

Death's on his right, you say? I take no heed. 
This night, of life nor death. I sleep not here 
To-night. 

CESARE 

In the Trastavere? 

GIOVANNI 

Why do you ask 
Me? Where I go is not far from the Ghetto, 
Where stands a hideous palace whose huge stone walls 
Exude the slime of an embodied crime. 

CESARE 

The Cenci Palace. Opening of stealthy doors 
There have I heard; near by stand villainous houses; 
And, on a certain night, being alone, 
Giovanni, I heard scrape on a window-pane 
What certainly was the sharpening of a knife. 

Exit GIOVANNI 
THE POPE 

He bade me not good-night! 

LUCREZIA 

The corpse-like bride 
That leads in endless night, awaits him there. 

CESARE 

A corpse-like curse. 

[36] 



CESARE BORGIA 

THE POPE 

I would this night were over! 

LUCREZIA 

I would it were not over. A brideless bride. 

Whose eyes have sucked in the noon's heat, whose 

perfumed 
Body is odorous as the Orient, her heavy 
Eyes masking a pool that has no depth 
Save unseen nakedness, her subtle hands 
Mesmeric, her pure breath that slays a man. 
Awaits him, pale before her mirror, whose fair flesh 
Lures a man's steps more than a snake a bird. 

CESARE 

You make me think of Ostia, where the Tiber 
Bends, making its escape seaward, where, on a night, 
A perfumed night, Cleopatra's galley went, 
A scented galley like the scented Queen, 
Its way to Egypt, where, on a certain day. 
No Caesar came but news of Caesar's death. 

Exeunt 



[37] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SCENE FOUR 

A Room in michelotto's House 

CESARE, MICHELOTTO and ASSASSINS 
CESARE 

Aut Cesar, aut Nihil: invented maliciously. 

Out of old logic and tenacious will. 

That's my device. But for the present this 

Question is all-important, vital as life: 

What must be done and never left undone; 

If not we lose our time in vain conjectures. 

Blood of his blood, bone of his bone, my Father 

Owns me his first-born. He has done much for me 

But nothing like the length of my desires. 

Think what I have done for him and myself! 

What have you gained from serving him, Michelotto? 

MICHELOTTO 

My Lord, none works for nothing: he gave me nothing. 

CESARE 

I am a Cardinal — with a difference — 

And the Pope made me Cardinal. Perhaps I chafe 

A little at the title. Blood is blood 

And in my blood desire in the extreme excites me 

To deeds the night might start at; deeds not done 

Yet, in the seven hells. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Our trade is trade; 
We beg not. 

[38] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

And we love not. 

CESARE 

If I love not 
This brother of mine, nor ever loved him, I 
Begged never a favour from him. Words like these 
Stir up intents that lead to events. The event 
To come is just as ripe as a ripe apple 
A snake stung in the grass. So if one bites it. 
The apple, that is, he is just dead. You seize 
The meaning of my parable .^^ 

MICHELOTTO 

I seize it. 

CESARE 

I name not the name I need not name. Let pass 
His name as the wind that passes. Sin is sin 
And love is love and that's not all : the end 
Of all is death. 

THIRD ASSASSIN 

Yea, you have said the word. 

CESARE 

And after that the Judgment. I judge not 
The man I name as God might judge me, when 
We meet, if meet we might. This dagger's point 
Of mine that aches in its sheath so quickens me. 
Now, as I touch it: don't you see, Michelotto, 
That every nerve in my mind is touched to the quick 
As the dagger's point that touches a man's skin; 
And that in my subtle and most intricate spirit 

[39] 



CESARE BORGIA 

Visions are laid bare, and that the speech must come 
From stress and struggle of things, till there be per- 
fected 
The keystone of mine own work, and I set myself 
Utterly free from a being that cries in mine ear. 
Forever? 

MICHELOTTO 

Fire is not more fervent than you are; 
Yet certain flames are easily put out. 

THIRD ASSASSIN 

As in a tavern where the candles bum 
The roof-trees down. 

CESARE 

Nay, nay, no wine-gossip; 
Something more wonderful than wine! What else 
But naked and bare tragedy.^ 

THIRD ASSASSIN 

Bare tragedy.? 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

It may sound singular, but I think you mean 
Just what we mean on any common day 
That hit our heels together in the jumping 
Of that which preys on actless action. 

CESARE 

There 
You strike a note that rings. One must take heart 
And bend no idle knees to any God 

[40] 



CESARE BORGIA 

That grimaces in a garden. If I could put 

The hate I have, the love I have not, for 

Him I have named, why, then, if God is God, 

God must not be thought on; for the act that's mine 

Acts with God never. 

MICHELOTTO 

So mad Nero said 
That set Rome's roofs on fire, and loved the fire 
That bade destruction ruin haK of Rome. 

CESARE 

Let me see for myself if this be so! 

And then, one gives a name to a certain name. 

MICHELOTTO 

A very nameless thing, an evil thing 
That needs no devil's sanction. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

What the devil 
Are we here for? The devil take me if — 

CESARE 

We need something dramatic, grip and strength. 
And more than that, a drama never acted 
Yet, on so small a stage. Now, here's one crisis 
That has no climax. 

MICHELOTTO 

You others there, look up; 
Don't be such tongue-tied beasts. I'm body and soul 
Cesare's; say the same. 

[41] 



CESARE BORGIA 

ASSASSINS 

Body and soul we are his. 

CESARE 

I thank you all; take this, a Spaniard's thanks. 
Conspirators, I think, have no braver souls 
Than we have; and I seal my Catholic faith. 
Not for the first nor the last time, on this deed 
The moon shall hate not, hot in our Roman sky. 
There is no greater question than this peril 
That imperils all of us. Were it so paid. 
All's over. You must not so stormily 
Stare on me, for here is simply naught but storm. 
Tempest and terror. 

THIRD ASSASSIN 

Here are simply our bodies; 
Hell knows if we have souls. 

CESARE 

Our souls are tossed 
On winds of flame and over waves that waft us 
I know not what strange scents. Above is hell. 
Let one suppose, and underneath is heaven. 
And God's in hell and Satan is in heaven. 
And we, we watch and pray not: yet the hour 
We pray not for is nigh at hand. 

MICHELOTTO 

What hour? 
[42] 



CESARE BORGIA 



CESARE 



A certain moonlit night. One's out of tune, 
The Pope might well be; for I know he knows not 
Aught of my meaning I have here delivered 
By word of mouth. And yet he guessed at it. 
By certain signs in his eyes and in his gestures. 

MICHELOTTO 

Always he adored Giovanni : for his sins 
Are sensual enough : he is capricious. 
And shadows make him start. 

CESARE 

So shall the shadows 
Start when Giovanni passes, mighty ministers 
Of all the mischiefs. Nay, there is never a vengeance 
Anywhere in this world like mine own vengeance 
That cries and must not be hurt. 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

The great thing is 



To strike but once. 



THIRD ASSASSIN 



The great thing is to strike 
Till there's no room to think a man's alive. 

CESARE 

There is no room, and yet the man's alive, 

The being that cries ever in mine ears, 

A crying that is more insatiable than the wind's, 

[43] 



CESARE BORGIA 

A crying that is more intolerable than the sea's. 
I hold to the helm of Fortune. And have I not 
Every just reason in this reasonless world 
To remit this just, this deadly deed to other's 
Hands a,nd not mine? I remit this to your hands: 
And, with these words, I bid you all Good-night. 

Exit CESARE 



SCENE FIVE 
vannozza's Vineyard in San Pietro in Vincola 

VANNOZZA 

The Serpents have been gliding in the streets 
And we're outside the gates of Paradise 
But not as exiles from the wrath of God. 

CESARE 

Fear not God's anger. Satan is a Serpent. 
These live in passionately untempered evil 
And sin has clothed them with their slimy skin 
That makes thought itself weary. 

SANCIA 

Thought itself 

Thinks inwardly. The snakes have fascination 
And never think even of the poison in them 
That turns from violent life to violent death. 

GIOVANNI 

Cesare, your strangling, cruel, serpent eyes 
Are fixed on mine; they will not draw me in 
Your magic circle. 

[44] 



CESARE BORGIA 

VANNOZZA 

Why do you shiver, Giovanni? 

CESARE 

As one whose leg is sunk up to the knee 
In the earth of a new-made grave? 

GIOVANNI 

No, no, no, no! 
Does a wolf caught in a trap shiver? 

SANCIA 

You make me laugh. 
I think of a girl we know, one Benedicta, 
A pretty sort of baggage is that child! 

GIOVANNI 

Pretty she may be: the devil take me if 

I know what you are driving at, you two — 

Conspirators, perhaps. 

CESARE 

That's very strange 
Giovanni mine; and the devil take me if 
You haven't uttered a word I never thought 
Had leapt to your lips. 

SANCIA 

How your lips twist and twitch, 
Giovanni! Have we hurt you? Anyhow 
You seem to grudge us every word we say — 
If grudging were worth a coin one tosses. 

[45] 



CESARE BORGIA 

GIOVANNI 

Lucrezia — 

Would she were here! — would hate you; how I hate 

You, Sancia! 

SANCIA 

Me, Sancia? Because the stars are fewer 

In heaven's span, and June's not over yet, 

And stings are stings: the Ghetto's something too 

And people quite improper who trip there 

On their own errands; these you ought to know. 

GIOVANNI 

Suppose I do not, or suppose I do. 
What matters it? 

CESARE 

It matters very much; 
You may have greater knowledge than we have 
Of those one hangs like rats that squeak too much 
And care not overmuch for the merciful bowels 
Of Mother Church, and get few crumbs cast to them, 
Anyhow, from anyone's table. 

GIOVANNI 

That's odd enough; 
For don't Jews help one to one's sins, who help 
None to the Gods they don't believe in? 

CESARE 

"Thou sayest 
It." 

[46] 



CESARE BORGIA 

VANNOZZA 

How your nerves are jangling ! Wrangle not 
With wicked words. This is no orchard-pit 
Where bones of dead men lie. 

GIOVANNI 

" Where dead men lie.^" 

CESARE 

Nay, bones of dead men. 

VANNOZZA 

Will you never end? 
You play on words, words always. By the light of love 
I have for you, this Thursday is wholly mine. 
Mine utterly and yours. It is Passion Week! 
For God's dear sake, don't leave me on this night 
Of nights, for I am passionate to want you 
In all my love to keep you here all night. 

CESARE 

Your fairer son leaves with your swarthier son. 
This very night of nights. 

GIOVANNI 

This night of nights.'^ So says your swarthier son 

Who has all that's lacking in me; so he thinks; 

So think not I. He ever had his will 

Fixed as the four winds in the world's four quarters. 

They change their will : he changes his : some wind 

Is ever in his laughter; but his laughter 

Is colder than the winter wind. 

[47] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SANCIA 

You are right, 
Giovanni: What keen insight suddenly 
Shakes you out of your wonted fashion? 

VANNOZZA 

Can Cesare 
Answer this? 

CESARE 

Why should I answer? You might as well ask me 
Is the road safe to Naples? That I know not. 
Only, whether the roads be safe or not, 
To-morrow finds us on our way to Naples. 

GIOVANNI 

So Pontius Pilate might have said to Christ. 

Outside is heard a voice singing 
Don Cesare laughs at God 
And drinks light wine to the brim. 
He scourges the Pope with a rod 
Of his wrath and his head makes nod 
The stars that laugh at him. 

GIOVANNI 

It is your turn to shiver, Cesare, 

Now. 

CESARE 

I? Never. It is the voice of Gian the Jester 
Who followed me: not that he's mine; Lucrezia's 
Favourite Jester. 

SANCIA 

Why's not Lucrezia here? 
[48] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 



For her soul's sake. 



GIOVANNI 



For her soul's sake ! For her sins' sake, more likely, 
Considering the life we lead. 



VANNOZZA 



She's my child. 
If she be sinless or sinful, she's my child; 
And I defy the world to sever us ! 



CESARE 



There flames the real Vannozza; she who keeps 
Herself so much out of our way. The mother in her 
Survives the Sinneress. 

VANNOZZA 

Eh, you still jibe at me: 
Your jests strike never hard. For I am one 
That has but little will, one easily swayed, 
And never know if evil turns to right: 
Nor if God really loves us. 

GIOVANNI 

That's a saying 
Our Sire might solve. 

CESARE 

A saying he dare not solve. 

SANCIA 

Indeed he dare not. 



[49] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Now take this case, Giovanni : 

Suppose I choose to go by night, as you do, always. 
Masked and disguised, in quest of one knows what, 
Tripping on hght heels after any adventure? 

GIOVANNI 

Where sportive ladies have their doors ajar? 

CESARE 

Exactly so. You must not hunt me out. 

In. that case, for I never hunted you. 

* 

GIOVANNI 

Hugely you say these threats; when the street's hushed 
You won't do that. 

CESARE 

Nay, not for some intense girl 
That entreats you with the eyes, when one in Church 
Crosses her: not for Christ's passion on the Cross! 

SANCIA 

You get about the best that God invents 
In finding simple beauty, with a soul. 

VANNOZZA 

Why talk of women always? This one night — 
Nay, not our last — don't spoil: that were bad luck. 

GIOVANNI 

Cesare, forgive me, for our Mother's sake. 

They take each other^s hands 

[SO] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

There's no forgiveness needed. Words are wind 
And wine is wine; and we are at the Feast. 

GiAN {j)asses singihg~\ 

I have gone on without thinking 
If the cup that I am drinking 
May not overflow the brim; 
And I wonder this should be. 
Death can dare to think of me 
Seeing I never thought of him. 

GIOVANNI [leaping wp] 

Confound the creature ! Had I the chance to catch him 
His ears had paid for this insult. 

SANCIA 

Sit down; be quiet. There have been things worse 
Than this to be endured. By all the Saints 
You are wrong, wrong. 

GIOVANNI \_sits down\ 

Suppose I am, or right 
It is no mercy of mine to let him go 
Unhanged, who well might decorate a gateway; 
Only, I let him go, his neck unbroken. 

CESARE 

Is that your choice? You had no other choice. 

GIOVANNI 

Suppose I had my choice the man were hanged. 

[51] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

You said before : "his neck." You change your mind. 

GIOVANNI 

Men's necks are broken easily enough. 

CESARE 

Not half as easily as having a man slain. 

GIOVANNI 

Slain, yes. 

CESARE 

Nay, I say, striving after things done right 
Or acts done wrong can never lead to much. 

GIOVANNI 

Will you rain curses on a woman's lips? 

CESARE 

Even the rain can't wash a wound quite clean. 

SANCIA 

Well, what with wounds and blood and rain and curse 
And necks and nothing, surely our wine might turn 
To a bitter taste. 

VANNOZZA 

Nay, never, Sancia. 

I drink thus pure red wine to all of you. 
Have I, who loved and love you, ever praised 
You for your beauty, Giovanni — overmuch.'^ 
For mine is on the wane. 

[52] 



CESARE BORGIA 

GIOVANNI 

You have praised me beyond 
All belief of praise. 

VANNOZZA 

One gains eternal fame. 

CESARE 

I pledge you both, now, in the spirit's name. 

They drink 

SANCIA 

How lovely is your vineyard; now the hour 

On the sundial points to ten. Night's shadows fall 

As ours might on the grass; the crocuses 

Like little flames of gold shine. The swift lizards 

Leap in delight and flash and vanish away. 

Only the wind's restless always in hot June; 

And can a man be quiet in his soul 

And love the wind? 

CESARE 

I love the wind and sea. 
And I love wine and kisses; and I love blood. 

GIOVANNI 

Nothing but blood that's blood and wine that's wine 
And death that's death: and where do I come in.? 

CESARE 

You come in always as you used to come. 

[53] 



CESARE BORGIA 

GIOVANNI 

With blood before me and with blood behind 
As an image out of hell's flames risen to earth 
Out of a spirit of sheer mockery? 

CESARE 

We are not in Spain : and you are not in hell — 
Yet; and there are worse things than mere blood- 
shedding 
When death exacts from blood some reckoning 
We reek not of that alive. The stain of blood 
Flies upward: so I read in a Spanish Tragedy 
That deals with sinister matters; now corruption 
Stalks in with spell-bound gestures; now the scent 
Of graveyard earth stinks in our nostrils; now 
A phantom, in a wizard shape, comes dancing 
With blood upon the delicate soles of his feet. 

GIOVANNI 

Sancia, I suffer from the intensity of this heat. 
One stifles. I were fain the heavens took fire 
And the rain fell like drops of blood. To think 
Even of sleeping is as if one asked the owls 
To stop their hooting. 

CESARE 

Sleep may come on you. 
I am no owl to beat against your windows 
With wings the rain has hurt with drops of blood. 

SANCIA 

I say to you, the root of hate grows hellward 
And from the roots of evil reptiles thrive. 

[54] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

I say to you that reptiles always thrive. 

VANNOZZA 

I tell you here's too much of treasonous malice. 
Here, in this very shoal and shore of time, 
We'll jump the life to come; imaginings 
Beat at our hearts, and present fears are less 
Than such uncertain images of things 
We know too little of. Let us arise now. 
And taste, after our feast, the air of night. 

They walk to and fro 

CESARE 

Mother, I fear it is time for us to leave — 
To leave in peace — this place of holy rest. 

VANNOZZA 

Why go so soon, my son? The air is fresh. 

CESARE 

The air is fresh. The wind will soon blow shrewdly. 

GIOVANNI 

I have no haste to hasten back to Rome. 

SANCIA 

I stay here for the night, with your kind leave, 
Vannozza. 

[55] 



CESARE BORGIA 

VANNOZZA 

Certainly, dear child. Yet these must go — 
Alas, alas ! They must — these sons of mine 
Their Holy Father waits for in the Vatican 
To bid them both farewell. 

CESARE 

Alas, dear Mother, 

The Pope desired me — ardently — to return 

To the Vatican before he takes his rest. 

GIOVANNI 

His rest? Sleep sound he may — sleep he may not. 

CESARE 

I am quite certain you shall sleep to-night. 

GIOVANNI 

I have no hope at all to sleep to-night. 

CESARE 

I catch your meaning. Let our mules be harnessed. 

VANNOZZA 

I see they are both harnessed at the gate. 

CESARE 

Wish us good-night, for we must both be gone. 

[56] 



CESARE BORGIA 

VANNOZZA 

Good-night, Cesare; good-night, Giovanni mine. 

They embrace 
Cesare, who is that hooded man I see 
Behind the mule-guides? 

CESARE 

You need not fear 
A man whose face is masked. He comes at nights 
When I am — not in the Vatican. Good-night. 

GIOVANNI \_aside~\ 
Cesare, you must leave me at the Cesarini. 

CESARE \_aside~\ 

A palace named after me? That's sinister. 
Leave you I shall; my way lies not your way; 
For I must go to the Piazza degli Ebrei 
To pray some damned soul shirks not his own Hell. 

Exeunt 



SCENE SIX 
A Square in the Trastavere 
Enter michelotto with two assassins 

MICHELOTTO 

The hour is after midnight, not death's hour 
Sounds yet, and there are ghosts that mope in Hell, 
And Satan stalks in Rome and goblins laugh 
From the house-roofs. Perdition awaits us if — 

[57] 



CESARE BORGIA 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Tremendous If? Why, in the devil's name. 
Have you brought us here? 

MICHELOTTO 

To do a sinister deed. 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

A storm of ghosts to give us ghostly aid? 

That shall make men shudder in their very graves; 

There shall be blood on the untimely lips of Death 

And a certain dusty hunger in his bones. 

The deed, you ask? A deed that has no name, 

Yet has a name. In the name of toad-stools, what? 

MICHELOTTO 

Something less harsh than murder; nay, a deed 
That has no shape of breath; nay, not the wind 
Can shape it to its purpose. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Our purposes 
Are plain and simple. We know many a trick; 
We know your name; we have entered in your pay; 
Here we three are : and there the Tiber crawls. 

MICHELOTTO 

And there the Tiber crawls. We are but three. 
And soon shall come a fourth. I am an Artist 
In the fine art one names the Art of Slaying. You 
Are less than slaves. 

[58] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

So you may think of us. 
It seems there's here a kind of perfidy, 
A thing that has a mask on, an apology 
For Vice. 

MICHELOTTO 

You seem to grasp my meaning. What's Vice 
But Vice, and that's perfidious, as one's death .?^ 
Time's up, by the moon's shadow: how time shps 
Under one's feet ! Brats have grown into whores. 
It is a whoremonger you have to slay. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

The lordliest whoremonger that lives in Rome.^^ 

MICHELOTTO 

The lordliest. 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

There is no wind at all in this fierce heat; 

The air we breathe is hell's; my knife wants sharpening. 

MICHELOTTO 

You see that house with the white balconies, 

Two windows open and the other shut — 

Rough whitewood shutters, silent as blind death — 

Where someone sleeps and someone wakes (no angels, 

No angel ever sleeps) that not the dawn 

Yet flares on, blood-red- weaponed out of heaven — 

Where lives a woman with olive skin, black eyes, 

A morbid languid Asiatic creature 

Who gives, not sells, her body? 

159] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 



That naked house? 



MICHELOTTO 



Yes. Behind it stands 
The ancient Basihca of Santa Maria 
In Trastavere, dehcate in desolation; 
And beyond that, the Tiber. 



FIRST ASSASSIN 



One ought to know it! 
The refuse of the filthiest part of the city 
Lies on its banks abandoned; a muddy river. 
An ugly yellow river. 

MICHELOTTO 

There you will have to swing the man you have slain 
Into the depths where slime is crawling. 

FIRST ASSASSIN \_showing his knife he has sharpened] 

The first man 
That opens yonder door, and comes with wine 
And lust after his limbs have danced all night 
Into the street where none hold Carnival.? 

MICHELOTTO 

The same. He will have played dice on the harlot's bed 
Desiring to divine his future. This 
Shall he divine to-night. 

Exit 

[60] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

Hanged Judas' price 
Of Blood, that's all our hell-hound, Don Michele 
Michelotto, gave us. Destruction take his throat 
When next he pays assassins ! 



FIRST ASSASSIN 

Do you know her name. 



Hers, who lives there? 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

No. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Imperia, a Lamia, a strange snake-woman. 
Some call a Vampire. 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

You mean dead-living creatures that rise from graves 
At midnight and suck the blood out of one's veins 
And grow the lovelier for the taste of blood? 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Those that she slays turn Vampires. 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

I see a face — 
A man's, I think — pass inside the window. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Perhaps a Vampire! 

[61] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

Silence! Listen! Wait in the shade. 

The door opens and Giovanni, flushed with wine, 
comes into the street and shuts the door behind him. 

GIOVANNI [^singing'] 

What a lovely thing this youth is, 
If but Youth could always stay so! 
You'd be happy? Be to-day so, 
In to-morrow's tale no truth is. 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

Sackful of Vices, Pit of Infamy, 

There are several deaths by which a man may die. 

Look not so pale : there's no escape for you. 

GIOVANNI 

Your dire looks harbour death. You are mad! Give 
way! 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

No other way. 

GIOVANNI 

O I am trapped, I am trapped! 
O fair Night be not fatal to me ! In your ear. 
You there, I'll give you a heap of golden ducats. 

FIRST ASSASSIN \^aside to second] 
Were he the Pope's Son, now, we'd give him life. 

GIOVANNI 

Let not gush forth my blood! O spare my life 
Or you'll be damned forever. I am the Son — 

[62] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

Here's a fine drug for you — 

They stab him 

GIOVANNI 

A spirit of hell 
Has turned hell's gate back for me. 

He falls 
O God, God, 
Be not pitiful ! 

Dies 

FIRST ASSASSIN 

May God have mercy on him ! 

SECOND ASSASSIN 

The man we have slain was innocent of blood : 
We keep the taint of it on ours. Come now 
Lift up his head, I will lift up his heels. 

Before they have raised him imperia rushes out 
and falls on her knees beside the body of giovanni. 

imperia 

What have they done to you, Giovanni .^^ What have 

they done? 
Giovanni, Giovanni, they have killed the heart that 

was mine! 

The curtain falls 



[63] 



CESARE BORGIA 

SCENE SEVEN 

The Vatican 

Enter the pope and cesare borgia 

THE POPE 

For seven whole days and nights (such nights that slay 

The soul) I was alone as God might be 

On His throne lonely; sleeping not, one thought 

In my mind always (a thought to make one mad) 

Beat in the hollow corners of my brain 

And drove me into curses dread and deep 

And direr imprecations that howled in the air 

As the wolves howl that hunger, thirst for prey: 

I was, was not, myself. 

CESARE 

You are alive, 
Giovanni's dead, and what is Rome is hell. 
I have confessed to you the deed I did not do, 
That had it done; for vengeance in my spirit 
Hurled me against the fiery gates where Satan 
Waits, hurled me back, not in the name of God. 

THE POPE 

Name not God's name. An eternity has passed 
From the instant when I saw, dead, the adored 
Dear body of my son — the blood washed clean, 
Alas, of his nine wounds — whereon my senses 
Left me and I fell — 

[64] 



CESARE BORGIA 



CESARE 



As Dante, Sire, in hell 
After Francesca had sighed out the last 
Sob of her tragic heart, whirled on by flame — 



THE POPE 



— Fell and was dead, dead to awake to life. 
And, living, to have had your breath on mine 
And heard your accursed lips that dared not lie 
Smite mine. 

CESARE 

I smote you not. I smote with words 
Your lips that loathed me. 

THE POPE 

Cesare, if flesh is blood 

And blood is flesh, this that was veritable man 

Is now no longer man nor veritable. 

But what is veritable is the naked fact 

That we who have talked one hour over what is 

Both flesh and blood are not heartless as his heart 

Now silenced: yet he is as absent from us now 

As we are from God*s thought, we who have passed 

Out of his death-chamber: and we, even as he. 

Shall get no answer from a dead man's lips. 

CESARE 

You have spent your curses on me. Curse yourself, 
Who have need of curses. Loveless are we now, 
That have to live, and live down hate and love. 

[65] 



CESARE BORGIA 

THE POPE 

Blood of my blood you are and of Vannozza*s, 

And therefore are you a devil not yet damned 

No absolution ever can absolve: 

For what is absolution if I give it 

To one who sets his right foot on my throne 

And might, one night, set foot upon my face? 

CESARE 

I might, one night, set foot upon your throne. 

THE POPE 

I have been monstrous, you have overpassed me; 
I have been perverse, always — Your perversion 
Conceives against me and for me vast conceptions 
Most terrible and unholy and atrocious — 
Because you are my son. Yea, you have helped me 
Because you are my son. Son, if you slay me — 
There's still one reason — because you are my son. 

CESARE 

Because I am your son, I shall not slay you. 
Because you are my father, who shall slay you? 
The question of the slaying of a Sire 
Is out of my conception. Of you begotten 
And of Vannozza conceived, I am not yours 
Wholly, nor hers: and therefore I have chosen 
The one course left me. I live. Giovanni's dead. 

THE POPE 

Yea, one lies dead, who had a right to live. 
And one stands living, who had the right to die. 

[66] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

Who had the right to hve. Nay, all your curses 
Shall give not the dead back life; nor give me, living, 
The right to smite you with curses. There's an end 
Of all things, not of this thing, that lies beneath us. 
Wounds have no words: he shall not speak again. 

THE POPE 

You say it, you whose hands are not clean of blood. 

CESARE 

Are your hands clean? 

THE POPE 

They taste of blood. 

CESARE 

Do mine? 

THE POPE 

Mine shall taste always of blood. Have we not felt it? 

CESARE 

Yes, we have felt it, and the taste remains. 

THE POPE 

Always to be haunted by the smell of blood? 

CESARE 

Mere physical disgust and that wears off. 
There's an intense intoxication in a crime 



[67] 



CESARE BORGIA 

That is not wine's intoxication, but the revenge 
Of heated blood against heated blood: a thing, 
I say, that has no more meaning than a word 
The lip lets slip; only, if someone slips, 
The other follows. 

He makes the gesture 

THE POPE 

The God that made us evil 
Did that irrevocably; for, as we make ourselves. 
Ourselves can be unmade; what's good in us 
Comes not of our own goodness. Lucrezia 
Has the evil of her beauty made as a snare 
For men's souls. But — as for the one soul that's fled.? 



CESARE 

Ask of the Great, ask not of me, Sire Father! 

THE POPE 

As the wind wavers a man — as Judas swings 
Forever on a pale wild olive bough 
Where Satan tempts him everlastingly 
And begs from him his soul he cannot give 
Because its thirst can never be extinguished — 
I might be hung between the Sun and Moon 
And see the clouds scowl, hear the winds blow. 
The owls that shriek, the minutes as they go, 
And, with distracted countenance, still live on 
Who saw God made and eaten all day long 
And blessed the world; and never see my Son, 
Giovanni. Well, what recompense for that? 

[68] 



CESARE BORGIA 

CESARE 

None, Sire. It is I that keep the shame of it. 

We have drunk deep of our impurity, 

And there's but one most certain dining-time 

Betwixt us and confusion; and then waste. 

For Mahce waits on us with her stooped brows. 

And time's eternal motion will not stay 

One instant for our sakes. And she may come, 

Lucrezia, she must come; and with her bring 

I know not what — what all the burning waters 

Of the wide seas' conflagration might present 

To our unrepining spirits. 

THE POPE 

She will come 
And with her all the beauty of the world. 
I dare not breathe; the air grows heavy. My senses 
Are terrible to contend with. Let not my feet 
Stagger, O God, into the abyss of hell ! 

CESARE 

Sire, be not sinister. The Gods forbid 
We take them sinister- wise; such knavery 
Is ever unrewarded. He that is proud 
Eats up himself: that's an old proverb; we 
Are no food fit for the Gods. Our generation 
Breeds vipers; there is more subtle craft in love 
Than love in craft. Nights are too brief; our taste 
Is violent and for things most violent. 

THE POPE 

Out of such violence comes more violence. 
As when a beast is wild and frenzy seizes 

[69] 



CESARE BORGIA 

His hungry eyes, so that he bites the ground 
And paws the earth up; so, if my God forgets me, 
Let him forget the beast that's in me! 

CESARE 

God forbid ! 
We are no such beasts, but very subtle serpents. 
Inextricably coiled, that cling and sting 
And hate and hiss. 

THE POPE 

Not all eternity 
Shall eat up all these hours. 

CESARE 

Not even the hunger 
That gnaws the edges of Eternity 
Shall give Lucrezia what's beyond all hunger: 
The gift of the vision of the fall of the Axe of Fate. 
Enter lucrezia in wild excitement 

LUCREZIA 

I have seen Giovanni ! Give me wine to drink ! 

CESARE 

Here's wine. 

LUCREZIA 

No, no, there's red blood in the cup. 
And if I taste it, I shall surely die. 

THE POPE 

Giovanni and alive .^^ 
[70] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

Yea, in my room. 
Alive and womided. Never a word said he 
But showed me all his wounds; one on his throat 
His left hand touched. I saw all the red stains, 
But not the blood. He wavered and was gone. 

CESARE 

His violent spirit tried to outride the wind. 
I am the hinge of the gate that opens Hell 
And is he not the key that locks the Gate.'^ 

LUCREZIA 

You slew him ! 

CESARE 

Nay, I slew him not, Lucrezia. 

LUCREZIA 

You lie to me, Cesare : you have always lied. 

You always will lie. You are ravenous with the thirst 

Of blood you live for, and blood's not all. Seven devils 

Take you! If ever I believe in you again. 

Let seven devils take me ! I have seen hell's fire 

In my room. I have seen blood on Giovanni's bosom, 

Blood on his mouth, and still you cry for his blood ! 

CESARE 

I swear on the black Crucifix that hangs there — 
There on the wall, that all souls kneel before — 
That I lie not. 

[71] 



CESARE BORGIA 

LUCREZIA 

I tell you that you lie. 

Lie in your throat. If he should enter here! 

I think you are mad that will not answer me. 

THE POPE 

Child, I have given Giovanni absolution 
But never as one gives it to the living. 

CESARE 

I am the hinge of the Gate that opens Hell. 

LUCREZIA puts her hand to her forehead, and gazes 
on them wildly, as the Curtain falls. 



[72] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

The scene represents a room in the Palace of duke 
JOVELIN OF BRITTANY, With a door on the right and at 
the back a window overlooking the sea. On the right, 
ISEULT OF BRITTANY sits at an embroidery-frame, with 
three of her ladies, ygraine, elaine, and Imogen. 

ISEULT of BRITTANY 

How can I think of Tristan while I sit 
And sew these idle flowers into a field? 
Tristan is fighting for his life, he plucks 
The harp-strings in a lady's chamber, sings. 
Of battles or of love that fights in hearts 
Wherever hearts are gentle. Where he is. 
There life is; and I sew my idle flowers 
Among their grasses, and I do not live. 

YGRAINE 

Lady, when women live there is an end 
Of peace in life : it were as well we loved. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Would you not love to love? 

YGRAINE 

I have loved, madam. 
[75] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Is this an answer? 

YGRAINE 

I have no other one 
Can say so much in Uttle. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

When you loved 
Had you no joy then? 

YGRAINE 

When I loved I had 
The bitter joy to know I loved a man. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

And evil came of it? 

YGRAINE 

Evil it was. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

I could love well, and yet be happy. Some 
Ask such a great and heavy deal of Love: 
He cannot make all happy overmuch. 
But I would build up the live air with peace 
About a quiet nesting-place for love. 

YGRAINE 

He will not nest, but he will fly abroad 
Until the waters are loud under him. 

[76] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY [tO ELAINE] 

Look out, and tell me if the sea by now 
Has lapped the seaweed off the sand? 

ELAINE [rising and going to the window} 

The sea 
Is thin and grey and wrinkled and speaks low. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

It speaks to me of Cornwall. I would be 
Again in Cornwall. There the iron rocks 
Are always white with foam, and there the wind 
Talks with the sea in caverns underground. 

YGRAINE 

The demons of the sea have ancient homes 

In Cornwall, and their names are like our names; 

We worshipped the same gods before they died. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

The Irish Iseult worships the old gods 
Within her heart, and only with her lips 
Prays by the name of Christ. She has a mind 
More manly-hearted than a man's. And now 
She is the queen of Cornwall. 

ELAINE 

She was made 
To be a queen. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Ah! you have seen her? 
[77] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

YGRAINE 

Once; 
In Ireland : all the women of her isle 
Are fiercer than our women, but in her 
There is the majesty of cruel beasts. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Could she be cruel? 

YGRAINE 

As a noble beast; 
Not crafty, not for less than hate or death. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

My thread is knotted; pray you, take the frame 

She rises, and moves to the window, where she sits 
down. 

I will work no longer. Will you sing to me? 

IMOGEN 

What shall I sing? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

The song that Tristan made 
When he was wounded, and, being like to die, 
Put all his pain, to ease it, in a song. 

IMOGEN [sings'] 

If this be love I die, 
I die of hoping love. 
That will not hence remove, 
Nor will not all deny. 

[78] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

His sharp and bitter dart 
Is fast within my side; 
Come, my old courage, hide 
Thy death within thy heart. 

I will not shrink although 
This death in love there be: 
She whom I love is she 
Who is through love my foe. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

A bitter and proud song, a lying song; 
It is not love nor any woman born 
That is so cruel to a man. I think 
A man may be so if one loves a man. 

YGRAINE 

Have I not said it, lady? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Yet I think 
Tristan could love. 

ELAINE 

He had an eager face; 
His eyes were swifter than a falcon's flight 
After a heron startled from the reeds 
Till a cloud hides him. 

YGRAINE 

Tristan could love well. 
[79] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

ISEULT OF BEITTANY 

Why am I lonely when I thmk of him? 

I would that I had never gone to Cornwall. 

And yet I would not. Tristan is my foe. 

As the song says, because I could have loved him. 

And now I send my heart out in weak sighs. 

Sewing them in with stitches, plaiting them 

Into a mere song's pattern, and I hear 

Nothing but my heart sighing in the wind, 

And in the sea that only used to sigh 

For its own old forgotten loneliness. 

The Irish Iseult, if she loved a man. 

Would take him with her little warrior's hands 

Out of a field of fighters; she would walk 

Through blood, yes, through her mother's feud of blood 

To Tristan, if she loved him; as indeed 

She hates him more than any man on earth. 

ELAINE 

Iseult of the White Hands is not so fierce 
To snatch her joy out of unwilling hands. 
Yet can she wait, and there is not a joy 
Which may not come to patience. 

The door opens, and an attendant enters, 

ATTENDANT 

Madam, the Duke. 
The old DUKE comes in. He goes up to his daughter 
The MAIDS go out, one by one, 

DUKE 

Peace to my daughter. 

He sits down beside her 
Is it peace with you? 

[80] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Father, I have forgotten where peace dwells. 

DUKE 

Why here, my child, if you but stay at home 

And furnish a guest-chamber in your heart. 

I am an old man, I have suffered loss 

Of well-nigh all a man can have to lose. 

Yet peace has never left me. Enemies 

Have torn my castles out of these weak hands. 

Harried my fields and farms, my people are 

My people now no longer; yet I still 

Sit by my fireside, while these walls are mine. 

And talk with peace. I am old, you are young: 

The young have many wants, as infants have. 

Who want the stars, the brightness of sharp swords. 

The burning rose of fire. What troubles you? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Father, the oldest trouble in the world. 

She rises Jrom her seat and sits on a stool at his feet, 

DUKE 

Ah, this is the first trouble of young maids. 
Before they learn what grief is. I have lived 
So long, and it has always been the same. 
Who is the man my daughter loves? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

A knight 
Who is the bravest knight in all the world. 

[81] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

DUKE 



What is his name? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Tristan. 

DUKE 

A noble name, 
I have heard only honour of the name; 
If he were here, his sword would gain my cause. 
Does Tristan know that Iseult loves him.? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

No. 
I have but spoken with him twice or thrice. 
In Cornwall; I have looked upon his face; 
He knows me not from any other maid. 

DUKE 

He has not spoken love to you? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Ono. 
He is in Cornwall, as I think; he serves 
Mark and my cousin Iseult; but alas. 
She hates him for her mother's feud of blood. 

DUKE 

They tell me there are women of that land 
Fairer than other women; it may be 
That Tristan loves some lady of the court. 

[82] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 



It may well be. 

DUKE 

And yet? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

And yet I love 
Tristan, and I could take him to my arms 
Even out of another woman's arms. 

DUKE 

My child, if this be so, and this is so. 
There is a power, I think, in patient love. 
Love draws its own unto itself, although 
The whole strewn world, violently opposed. 
Lie like a chasm between. I have seen hope 
Wrench its fulfilment from the grasp of things; 
And love is power, and hope is only sight. 
There is no witchcraft that can draw a man 
Like a weak woman's love, when that can wait 
And never waver. Can you wait.? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

As those 
That wait for morning. 

DUKE 

Yet if you would live 
Your very life, hope without fear, and will 
Without foreboding. Life is in to-day, 
Yesterday and to-morrow are but words, 

[83] 



ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

And all despair and fear and melancholy 
Are shadows of that shadow. Cast away 
Remembrance, and the fear of things to come, 
And live between the dawn and sunsetting; 
So shall desire die or be satisfied. 
So shall all things live out their hour, and die. 
So shall the world be constant to its change. 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

Father, there is no surety in the world. 

DUKE 

Then trust the world no more; trust your own soul, 
That makes the world as you would have the world. 

IMOGEN \_Jrom outside} 

If this be love I die, 
I die of hoping love. 

DUKE 

What is that song? 

ISEULT OF BRITTANY 

A song that Tristan made. 

ELAINE AND IMOGEN [^OUtSlde] 

If this be love I die, 
I die of hoping love. 
That will not hence remove, 
Nor will not all deny. 

DUKE 

Come, let us follow where these voices are. 

He takes iseult by the hand, and they go out together, 

[84] 



THE TOY CART 
A PLAY IN FIVE ACTS 



DECOR 

"There is your majesty at dice with the queen: behind 
you stands one damsel with the betel box, whilst 
another is waving the chounri over your head: the 
dwarf is playing with the monkey, and the parrot 
abusing the buffoon." 



FOUNDED ON THE MRICHCHHAKATI OF SUDRAKA 



COSTUMES 
WOMEN 

Waist decorated with tinkling bells; anklets of silver, 
large ear-rings set with pearls, bodice buttoned below 
the waist with gems; forehead stained with saffron, 
silver chains on the feet, on the forehead a mark 
brighter than the new moon; dress embroidered with 
the buds of the lotus; saffron-dyed vest; string of 
cowries round the neck, lips ruddy with betel; forehead 
marked with a saffron crescent. 



MENDICANTS 

Rosary in the hand, forehead stained with sandal, 
wallet at the side covered with black deer skin, vest- 
ments dyed in ochre, bamboo staves, long beards. 
Readers of the Puranas, carrying under their arms the 
sacred volumes wrapped up in the cloth on which they 
take their seat. 



PERSONS OF THE DRAIMA 

CHARADTJTTA, a Brahmin 

ROHASENA, Ms SOU 

MAiTREYA, a Brahmin, his friend 
SAMSTHANAKA, the hrother-in-law of the king 

THREE GAMBLERS 
THE JUDGE 
THE PROVOST 
THE RECORDER 

TWO CHANDALAS {fuhUc executioners) 

A MENDICANT FRIAR 
THE SERVANT OF CHARADUTTA 
VASANTASENA, a dancBT 
RAMBHA, her mother 

HER MAID 

MAID-SERVANT in Charadutta's house 

CROWD, ATTENDANTS, GUARDS 

THE SCENE taJces place in the city of Ujjayin^ 
in the Western part of India 



THE TOY OAET 



ACT I 

A room in charadutta's house, poorly furnished, with a 
few hooks and musical instruments, a drum, a tabor, a 
lute, and piper, lying about. At the back is a door open- 
ing into an outer court or garden, with a wall visible at 
the bach, beyond which is the street. The outer door is 
not seen. There is a curtained door at the side of the 
room, leading into the inner part of the house. 

CHARADUTTA 

Rebhila sang exquisitely! And as for his lute, it is 
a sea-pearl; it was more comfortable to my heart than 
a friend consoling a friend for the absence of the be- 
loved; it had a voice like the very voice of love. 

MAITREYA 

Well, well, for my part I am very thankful to be out 
of it. \JIe sits down, as if tired.^ 

CHARADUTTA 

Rebhila surpassed himself. 

MAITREYA 

Now, there are two things that I can never help laugh- 
ing at: A woman reading Sanskrit and a man singing 

[91] 



THE TOY CART 

a song. The woman snuffles like a young cow when 
the rope is first passed through her nostrils, and the 
man wheezes like an old pandit who has been saying 
his beads till the flowers of his chaplet are as dry as 
his throat; and the one seems to me as ridiculous as 
the other. 

CHARADUTTA 

Is it possible that you did not admire Rebhila's mar- 
vellous skill? His voice was at once so sweet and so 
passionate, so flowing and yet so precise, so full of the 
ecstasy of delight, that I half fancied I was listening 
to a woman whom I could not see. And now^ though 
the music is over, I can still hear the voice and the lute, 
the hurrying, rising, sinking, the pause and return of 
the wandering melody. 

MAITREYA 

The dogs were all asleep in the streets as we came back. 
They were wiser than we. [servant entersr\ Here, 
Vardhamana, tell Radanika to bring water and wash 
the master's feet. 

CHARADUTTA 

No, do not call her: she will be looking after the child. 

SERVANT 

I'll bring the water, sir, and Maitreya here can wash 
your feet. 

MAITREYA 

Do you hear this son of a slave .^^ He to bring the water, 
and I, who am a Brahmin, to wash your feet! 

[92] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Well, my friend, take the water, and leave him to do 
the rest. 

SERVANT 

Come, Mr. Maitreya, pour out the water. [He washes 
charadutta's feet and is going.'] 

CHARADUTTA 

Stay, Vardhamana, wash the feet of the Brahmin. 

MAITREYA 

Never mind; it is of little use; I must soon be off 
tramping again, like a beaten ass. 

SERVANT 

Are you a Brahmin, Mr. Maitreya? 

MAITREYA 

I am a Brahmin among Brahmins, as the python is a 
serpent among serpents. 

SERVANT 

Well, in that case I will wash your feet. [Washes 
them and goes out.] 

MAITREYA 

My very good Charadutta, do you want to know why 
that music went straight to your head, and has kept 
you ever since in the shadow of an intoxication? 

CHARADUTTA 

The music, and the memory of it. 

[93] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

Memory, that is it : it reminds you of Vasantasena. 

CHARADUTTA 

Vasantasena! 

MAITREYA 

You need not echo her name like that. Was I not 
with you in the garden of the temple of Kamadeva, 
and did you not see her, covered with gold upon gold, 
jingling with bracelets and anklets, like the chief 
actress in a new play? And what is more, did she not 
see you, and did she see anyone else after she had seen 
you? 

CHARADUTTA 

I must not think of her, Maitreya; and indeed I have 
no intention of thinking of her any more. 

MAITREYA 

Then hear no more music, offer up rice to the gods. 
[He looks out of the loindow.'] Here are a few small 
birds picking at three seeds in the garden; there used 
to be storks and swans there, and enough food for 
them; and forget all women, I say, forget all women. 

CHARADUTTA 

While Rohasena lives, how can I forget women? 
I love no living woman as I love the child of my dead 
wife. 

MAITREYA 

Perhaps not, but 'tis of a very different kind of love 
I am thinking. Vasantasena is a courtesan, and 

[94] 



THE TOY CART 

though she were the best dancer on hearts in the king- 
dom, and a woman of true rehgion, and loving to her 
lovers (and I neither say nor unsay any part of it), 
yet I would have you beware of her, and for a good 
round dozen of reasons. 

CHARADUTTA 

You are mistaken, Maitreya, both in her and in me; 
but you may give me your reasons. 

MAITREYA 

Well now, take myself. I can quite well remember in 
old days when I used to sit here, where we now are, 
but on cushions, where they now are not, and eating 
scented dishes until I could eat no more, like a city 
bull in the market-place. Now I wander about from 
house to house like a tame pigeon, to pick up what 
crumbs I can find. 

CHARADUTTA 

Forgive me, friend of all seasons; you are always 
welcome, and to my best; but it is my sorrow that 
I cannot now feast my friends as I did before. 

MAITREYA 

They feasted you out of house and home. You have 
a royal heart, Charadutta, and you kept a king's 
kitchen. 

CHARADUTTA 

Then it was not only my own doing, it was the loss 
of the royal favour. 

[95] 



THE TOY CART 



MAITREYA 



Well, you see where your friends and the present king 
(may his reign be brief and happy !) have brought you. 



CHARADUTTA 



Death would be better. Have you seen how all my 
friends desert me, Maitreya.^^ 



MAITREYA 



Like a cowboy, who drives his herd from place to place 
in the thicket, always in search of fresh pasture. 

CHARADUTTA 

To be poor is like dying slowly. But what has all 
this to do with Vasantasena? 

MAITREYA 

A very great deal. Do you know that at the house of 
Vasantasena the porter dozes in a big chair, as stately 
as a Brahmin deep in the Vedas; and the very crows, 
crammed with rice and curds, disdain the rice thrown 
to the gods? 

CHARADUTTA 

And if so? 

MAITREYA \jnore and more rapidly} 

The kitchen smells like the heaven of Indra, and the 
gateway, they tell me, to the inner court is like the 
bow of Indra in the sky. There are jewellers setting 
pearls and sapphires and rubies and topazes and other 
jewels; they cut lapis lazuli, polish coral, squeeze out 

[96] 



THE TOY CART 

sandal juice, and dry saffron; and there are men and 
women laughing and singing, and chewing musk and 
betel, and drinking wine; and quails fight, and par- 
tridges cry, and cranes stalk about the court, and 
peacocks dance on the grass and wave their jewelled 
tails like fans, and in the midst of them, like the mis- 
tress of Indra's garden, is Vasantasena! 

CHARADUTTA 

Whether you speak on your own laiowledge or on 
hearsay, I do not see how all this concerns me, or the 
least of your twelve good reasons. 

MAITREYA 

You have said it; you said it is better to die than to be 
poor. My first reason, then, and a sufficient reason, 
is this, that, as there is no lotus that has not a stalk, 
no trader that is not a cheat, no goldsmith that is not 
a thief, and no village meeting without a quarrel, so 
there never will be a woman of that profession of love 
that does not love gold first. 

CHARADUTTA 

There at least you are wrong. The beggars at all the 
gates of the city have blessed her: I listen to their 
voices. But enough of this, I have more serious 
matters to tell you of. 

MAITREYA 

All men are fools, and all women are like fortune, 
that is as sliding and slippery as a serpent. O, the 
folly of men, that will not know that a woman laughs 

[97] 



THE TOY CART 

money and cries money, and is altogether money, and 
that she squeezes a man like colour from a bag till he 
is drained dry, and then casts him out into any corner 
of the field. 

CHARADUTTA 

You think evil of women, because, it may be, you 
have known evil women. Such there are, and I pity 
them, because, having no souls for the life to come, 
they have not made for themselves delicate shadows 
of souls for the adornment of this present life. But 
you are right: I am too poor to be in any danger from 
this fair lady, not because she would come to me for 
gold, but because I should desire to cover her wrists 
and her ankles with fine gold. If I have heard rightly 
of her, she would give gold rather than take it. 

MAITREYA 

Heaven send her to your house with only a few pounds- 
weight of the gold and jewels she carries upon her 
person. 

CHARADUTTA 

Maitreya, this is unseemly. I tell you I have other 
matters to talk of, dangers, or perhaps hopes, that are 
now in men's minds. What do you think of the 
chances of Aryaka the cowherd against those of Pulaka 
the king? 

MAITREYA 

Aryaka has a prophet behind him, Pulaka only a 
throne. Yet a throne is stable, until many men over- 
turn it. 

[98] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Many men are pledged to overturn the throne of 
Pulaka. 

MAITREYA 

Here at least is one shoulder for the occasion. 

CHARADUTTA 

Is that meant for a word or a deed? 

MAITREYA 

Try me. 

CHARADUTTA 

I will try you. Will you share a secret with me? 

MAITREYA 

Give me half then. 

CHARADUTTA 

You must bear half of the burden. I am in the coun- 
sels of Aryaka. 

MAITREYA 

I knew it. Why did you not trust me sooner? 

CHARADUTTA 

You know, then, that he is to escape from prison? 

MAITREYA 

Is it so? When? 

CHARADUTTA 

To-morrow or the day after. His followers await 
him outside the gates. 

[99] 



THE TOY CART 



MAITREYA 



To escape from prison is hard enough, but not so hard 
as to get through the city gates. 

CHARADUTTA 

Have I not free passage at every gate? Is my carriage 
ever detained or examined? 

MAITREYA 

Ah ! you will send him in your carriage. 

CHARADUTTA 

I will take him in my carriage, and you will be with 
me. They will say at the gate: "That is Charadutta 
in his carriage with his friend Maitreya." No one 
will stop us. Once outside the gate he is among friends. 
Then we will return quietly. Will you come with me? 

MAITREYA 

I would come with you to the cross-roads by the 
southern cemetery, beyond which no man goes with 
his head on his shoulders. 

CHARADUTTA 

We risk no less. 

MAITREYA 

Go on. 

CHARADUTTA 

A messenger brings me word when he is out of prison, 
and where he is, there my coachman finds himself 
by precise accident, not knowing why. Promise me 
your help and your silence. 

[100] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

My help and my silence are yours. Why who knows, 
if the cowherd becomes king, Maitreya may creep into 
comfort at a cow's tail. 

CHAKADUTTA 

Aryaka will not fail. He will bring us freedom, and is 
not freedom more than all things? 

MAITREYA 

Can you say that? 

CHARADUTTA 

Why not? 

MAITREYA 

More than women and music? Why, your whole soul 
was filled with Vasantasena a minute ago, and will 
be filled with her again next minute. 

CHARADUTTA 

Do you think so? I do not think any woman will ever 
come between me and my duty. 

MAITREYA 

If Aryaka has many such followers he will not fail. 
Pulaka has none. His friends leave Pulaka daily, 
and not so much for love of one or the other as for 
hatred of the king's brother-in-law. Prince Sams- 
thanaka. 

CHARADUTTA 

If there is any man in the kingdom I would be least 
willing to welcome in my house, that is the man. 

[101] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

Do you take him to be your enemy? 

CHARADUTTA 

I take him to be every honest man's enemy, and I 
could hope he has made no exception of me. 

MAITREYA 

They say he is madly in love with Vasantasena, and 
that she will not suffer the odour of his cloak within 
three leagues of her nostrils. 

CHARADUTTA 

He is not only a terror to honest men, because he is 
afraid of the scabbard of his own sword; but women 
fear him because he is not ashamed that they should 
be afraid. Listen! What was that? A cry? 

MAITREYA 

It was nothing; the high road at this time of the 
evening is a-swarm with all sorts of loose persons, 
courtiers, and cut-throats. Let them all go their own 
way to destruction. 

CHARADUTTA 

That is an evil wish, and may bring us misfortune. 
Listen! Someone is knocking at the door. 

Sounds of hubbub are heard from the street , cries 
and scuffling. Then a knocking, charadutta and 
MAITREYA have both risen, maitreya opens the door 
and looks out, 

[102] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

Vardhamana is opening the door. Someone wants to 
come in. He tries to shut the door. It is pushed 
open. It is a woman, I can hear the sound of her 
anklets. She is richly dressed and covered with 
jewels. 

CHARADUTTA 

A woman, richly dressed, why does she seek to enter 
my house.? 

MAITREYA 

I will call to her not to come in. She is running through 

the court. . , 

He starts and falls back from the door as a woman 
comes hurriedly forward and stands on the threshold, 
veiled, and with her head bowed in an attitude of 
humility. 

VASANTASENA 

Master, forgive me ! A long pause 

CHARADUTTA [in a stifled voice'] 
Vasantasena ! 

MAITREYA [to somcone vnthout] 

No, no, not you, too ! 

A puffing and blowing is heard, and an immense 
woman, leaning on a stick, thrusts herself in, past 

MAITREYA and VASANTASENA. 
RAMBHA 

Vasantasena, indeed! Don't pretend that you don't 
know who it is. Who else should it be? Oh! my 

[ 103 ] 



THE TOY CART 

poor breath, who else would spend the last breath of 
her poor old mother with running about the streets at 
night, and without her attendants, and at the time of 
the evening when all the bad, wicked people are abroad 
on the king's highway! But indeed his Royal High- 
ness, if the girl could but see with the eyes of wisdom, 
her mother's eyes, I would say. ... 



MAITREYA \^at the door2 

They are all coming into the garden. It is the prince. 
I will go out and tell him what I think of him. [He 
snatches up a stick and goes out. Noise of voices is 
heardr\ 

CHARADUTTA {coming forward] 

Honoured guests, my house is yours. If it is too 
humble for your entertainment, it is at least a safe 
shelter against those who have dared to molest you. 
Deign to enter and be seated. 

RAMBHA 

You would come, Vasantasena; now won't you go 
in and sit down? I told you the prince meant no 
harm; it was only his way of showing his uncontrol- 
lable passion, and the uncontrollable passion of a 
great prince is a great honour. Thank you, sir, I will 
sit down with pleasure. [She sits down heavily and 
painfully.] 

VASANTASENA movcs forward and stands beside her 
And I suppose you have frightened away the prince 
for good and all. 

[104] 



THE TOY CART 

MAiTREYA \_ouiside the door] 

Not a step further, or you measure your sword against 
my stick. 

SAMSTHANAKA \_withouf] 

Who has got my sword? No, don't take it out of its 
sheath. 

MAITREYA [hacking to the doof\ 

Not a step further. 

CHARADUTTA [colls] 

Maitreya, give way! [_He goes forward.'] My lord, 
all guests are welcome to my house, who enter it in 
peace. 

SAMSTHANAKA [without] 

Stand back, all of you; not a step further. I go alone. 
[He appears, extravagantly and awkwardly overdressed, 
carrying his heavy sword. He disregards charadutta, 
and holds out his hands towards vasantasena.] Vasan- 
tasena ! 

RAMBHA 

His Royal Highness is speaking to you. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Why have you fled away from me, Vasantasena, like 
the deer from the hunter? But it is I that am hunted; 
all the dogs of the god of love are upon me. Why have 
you fled from me? You and sleep have fled from me 
together, and I dream by day, and if I see you, you 
flee away from me like a dream when one awakens. 

[105] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

The prince is speaking to you, Vasantasena. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Why have you fled from me Uke a peacock when her 
tail is in full feather in summer, and like a crane when 
she hears the thunder in the clouds, and like a jackal 
hunted by dogs? Your feet that were made for 
dancing have fled swiftly, like a snake from the king 
of the birds. I could outstrip the wind in its course, 
and shall I not overtake so delicate a flyer? Your 
ear-rings tinkled at your ears like a lute played swiftly 
by a master. But I have come upon you, and no man 
can take you out of my power. 

CHARADUTTA 

My lord! 

SAMSTHANAKA 

The king, Vasantasena, is my brother-in-law; the 
king will do anything that I ask of him; he will give 
me any of his treasures; you have only to ask of me, 
and I will give you everything you want. 

RAMBHA 

Do you hear that, Vasantasena? Listen to what he 
is saying, my daughter. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

How Is it that I, who am the king's brother-in-law, 
have to beg and not to command? How have you 
turned your eyes from my face, which is as the sun 

[106] 



THE TOY CART 

upon the face of the master of this house, which is as 
the moon in her last quarter? And you, sir, if you 
will deliver this woman into my hands, without dis- 
pute, her delivery shall be rewarded with my most 
particular regard; but if you will not, then count upon 
my eternal and exterminating enmity. 

VASANTASENA tums and looka at charadutta 

CHARADUTTA 

My lord, you have honoured me with your presence 
in my humble abode; be pleased to remove your 
shadow from my door. It is too protracted an honour. 

SAMSTHANAKA {retreating} 

The dog is disloyal. He shall suffer for it. Sir, no 
haste. [_He retreats.} 

MAITREYA comes towards him from the side with a 

threatening aspect. 
Vasantasena, what have you done to me.^^ You have 
bewitched me. 

RAMBHA \Jiobbling after him} 

Stop, stop, kind sir. She is not in her proper mind. 
If you will only listen to me, my lord! 

MAITREYA [tO SAMSTHANAKa] 

Have you any more speeches to make.^^ 

SAMSTHANAKA [looldng at him with contempt} 
I do not see you. Wait, Vasantasena! 

[107] 



THE TOY CART 

He goes out, followed by rambha, who plucks at his 
sleeve^ and by maitreya, who stops outside the door. 

VASANTASENA [_droppingon her knees before charadutta] 
You have saved more than my life. 

CHARADUTTA 

I have but opened my door. It is you who have come 
in, and you are Vasantasena, you have brought the 
spring, like an army with banners. 

VASANTASENA 

I am unworthy to come under your roof. 

CHARADUTTA 

It is because I made an offering this morning to my 
household gods that they have brought you under it. 

VASANTASENA 

I have found safety, but to remain longer would be 
too dangerous for me. 

CHARADUTTA 

My poverty is my safeguard. 

VASANTASENA 

Alas! sir, I would that it sheltered you not. 

MAITREYA [a/ the door~] 

Yes, if you have done whispering to your fine prince, 

and can leave his company for ours, come in, madam. 

They both come in, and rambha stands talking to 

MAITREYA, and then hobbles back to vasantasena. 

[108] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

Why cannot all folks live peaceably with one another? 
I, who am no longer in my first youth and full maturity 
of beauty, have in my time known many men, and 
some of them princes; but never have two men come 
to blows in my name! Conciliate them, I say to my 
daughter, conciliate them all: one never knows who 
may be king to-morrow. Vasantasena, the good 
excellent prince has gone away in a great rage, and I 
know not what he would have done if I had not fol- 
lowed and spoken peaceably to him. Oh! we are all 
undone, and it is this kind gentleman who took us in 
(the seven mouths of hell chew him up!) that will be 
the means of bringing trouble upon us. 

CHARADUTTA 

It is by such princes that kingdoms fall. I am glad 
to know myself his enemy. But no harm shall come 
on you. In my house you are safe, and I will not 
leave you till you are safe in your own house. 

RAMBHA 

Listen, my daughter, how kind the gentleman is. I 
think, sir, you have seen better days.^^ 

VASANTASENA 

Mother! 

CHARADUTTA 

A better night I have never seen. But I forget my 
duties. I have but poor entertainment to offer you, 
but, such as I have — Radanika ! 

MAID comes from the inner room, bringing glasses 
which she offers and then stands in a corner of the room. 

[109] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

Sir, we were on our way homeward, and have stayed 
too long already. 

CHARADUTTA 

I pray you, stay. 

. VASANTASENA 

Sir, I pray you, let us go. 

MAITREYA 

Very pretty on both sides; and whilst you two stand 
there, nodding your heads to one another like a field 
of long grass, permit me to bend mine, in the manner 
of a young camel with stiff knees, and request you will 
be pleased to hold yourselves upright again. 

RAMBHA 

A wise fellow. But we must indeed be going. 

VASANTASENA 

If your friend here would vouchsafe us the defence of 
his company on our way home. 

CHARADUTTA 

Maitreya, attend the ladies. 

MAITREYA 

You will do better to go with them yourself, sir, for 
I truly fear that these court libertines would have no 
more respect for my person than dogs have for a meat- 
offering in the streets. 

[110] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

I will attend them, but meanwhile see that torches 
are prepared. 

MAITREYA 

Ho, Vardhamana! [He comes inJ] Light the torches. 

SERVANT 

How are they to be lighted without oil? 

MAITREYA [tO CHARADUTTA QSlde'] 

To say the truth, sir, our torches are like harlots: 
they shine not in poor men's houses. 

CHARADUTTA 

Silence! I will go and see to them myself. I crave 
leave of absence, that I may prepare for your safe 
conveying. Come with me, Maitreya. 

They go out into the court, rambha gets up and 

prowls about, looking at everything. 

RAMBHA 

Not enough here, my daughter, to look decent on the 
walls of a kitchen-wench. Poor man, and this is what 
you would come to! 

VASANTASENA 

Poor man ! 

From behind the curtain over a door is heard the 
voice of a child wailing out, "I don't want it," and 
throwing something on the ground. 

[Ill] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

A child! [To the maid.] Has your master children? 

MAIDSERVANT 

One son, madam. 

VASANTASENA 

Then he is not poor. Oh, let me see him. 

The child pushes aside the curtain, and comes in 
crying and dragging a clay toy-cart by the wheeL 
MAID runs up to him. 

MAIDSERVANT 

Rmi away, Rohasena, and play with your cart. 

ROHASENA 

I don't want this cart; it's only clay; I want the gold 
one. 

VASANTASENA 

Poor little fellow! 

MAIDSERVANT 

And where are we to get the gold, my little man? 
Wait till your father is rich again; then he will buy 
you a gold one. 

ROHASENA 

I want a gold one now. 

VASANTASENA 

Come here and kiss me, my child. (She takes him in 
her arms and kisses him.) How like his father he is! 

[112] 



THE TOY CART 



MAIDSERVANT 



He is not only like him in face; but is just the same in 
disposition. He is the sweetest child in the world. 
His father worships him. 

VASANTASENA 

Why is he crying.? Don't cry, little man. What are 
you crying for? 

ROHASENA 

For my cart. I don't want this cart. 

VASANTASENA ■ 

What does he mean? 

MAIDSERVANT 

Our neighbour's child had a cart of gold, and the child 
here used to play with it. Now the other has taken it 
away, and he wants it back. I made him this one of 
clay, but he keeps saying: "I want the gold one!" 

VASANTASENA 

Is it not terrible that a child should want anything and 
not have it? I thought that children had everything 
that they wanted. And here is a little child who 
suffers already because another is more fortunate 
than he is. The fates of men are like water-drops 
trembling on the leaves of a lotus. But for a child! 
I did not know there was so much cruelty in the world. 
Child, child, don't cry, and you shall have a gold cart. 

[113] 



THE TOY CART 

ROHASENA 

Radanika, who is this lady? Is she my new mother? 

VASANTASENA looks oTi the grouud in silence. 

MAIDSERVANT 

No, no, this isn't your new mother. 

ROHASENA 

I thought she might be, Radanika; but then how could 
it be my mother when she wears such fine things? 

CHARADUTTA \^OUtside'] 

Radanika! you must come here. 

MAIDSERVANT goBS hurriedly into the court, 

VASANTASENA 

O, my child, you do not know what pitiful things you 
are saying. [Half -laughing and half-crying, takes off 
her jewels one by one, and holds them up to the child, and 
then drops them into the toy-cart^ Here is a little gold 
chain for you, and I will take this long chain off my 
neck. 

RAMBHA 

Vasantasena ! 

VASANTASENA 

Do you see this bracelet? A King of the West gave 
that to me. 

RAMBHA 

Vasantasena! the king's bracelet! 

[1141 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

But I don't care for it: I give it to you. And here is 
another, that was given me by somebody I loved very 
much; but I don't care for it any longer. You shall 
have that too. 

RAMBHA 

Vasantasena! the bracelet of Rama. Are you beside 
yourself ! 

VASANTASENA 

Silence, mother! And here is a diamond that came 
from deep under the earth in Africa, and this pearl 
was brought up by a diver from a bottomless sea. 
You shall have them both. 

RAMBHA 

All our treasures ! O, Vasantasena ! 

VASANTASENA 

They are all yours, because you are a child, and Chara- 
dutta's, and because you are unhappy. Now I am 
really your mother. 

ROHASENA 

Why are you crying? I won't take them, because you 
are crying. 

VASANTASENA 

Now, I am not crying any more. Look, now your cart 
is more beautiful than any gold cart; it is more beauti- 
ful than any cart in the world. Go and play now, 
child. 

EOHASENA and RADANiKA Qo iuto the inner room, 

[115] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

Vasantasena, you are foolish and wicked. You have 
given away treasures as if they were trinkets. And 
I know why you have done it. 

VASANTASENA \jwith suddeu severity^ 

Mother, you will know nothing. Not a word of this. 
Hark, they are coming back. I will cover myself with 
this cloak, it is Charadutta's, it is like a garden of 
jasmine. 

CHAEADUTTA and MAiTREYA enter with torches, 

CHARADUTTA 

We have found but little oil for the torches, but the 
moon is at the full, and all the stars wait upon Vasan- 
tasena. 

VASANTASENA followed by her mother, moves towards 
the door, charadutta a/ic? maitreya stand with 
their torches lifted. 



CURTAIN 



[116] 



THE TOY CART 



ACT II 

A room in vasantasena's house, luxuriantly fur- 
nished, with an inner door, covered with curtains, lead- 
ing into the house. A large door on the left leads from 
the street, through inner courts. Near this door are tables, 
at one of which three men are flaying dice with cowries. 

GAMBLER 

No more dice for me! How many times am I to be 
ruined by this evil fate that shakes out always odd for 
even and even for odd. A curse on all cowries! 
\_Throws down the dice.~\ 

SECOND GAMBLER 

It is always the next throw that brings luck. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

So you say when you have been winning. How am 
I to pay you if I let you win any more.^ 

SECOND GAMBLER 

A gambler asks that! As if this man did not know 
every cunning short cut to fortune! How many parts 
have you played already, O player at all games, under 
all disguises 

FIRST GAMBLER 

No more dice for me! 



THE TOY CART 



SECOND GAMBLER 



Dice and women never played any man false, imless 
the man first played false with dice and women. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Where is the man who has never played false with 
either? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

I know such a man, and he has lost deeper than any 
gamester. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Who is the man? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Charadutta. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Charadutta does not need to suffer from dice or women; 
the gods are against him, and against the gods there 
is no remedy. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

What has befallen him? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

He was the richest man in the city, and now he is 
penniless and without more than a single friend, who 
sticks to him like a poor man's dog; he was married, 
and his wife is dead; he was a good servant to the 
king, and his place has been taken from him. What 
dice have ever thrown such a fortune? 

[118] 



THE TOY CART 

THIRD GAMBLER 

If I hear rightly, it is his own bounty that has ruined 
him, and no fault of his. He was eaten up by hungry 
friends. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Is it easier to bear chastisement because one is inno- 
cent .? Now, if it had been our friend here.'^ 



FIRST GAMBLER 

I make no pretences, and the gods have little enough 
need to concern themselves with my doings. What 
need have they, when I am here, and with you, and 
with these accursed cowries? And are any of us here 
except by the aid and for the profit of the old mer- 
cenary mother of Vasantasena, the mountainous 
Rambha.f^ 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Say nothing against the mother of Vasantasena. 
But for her, as you say, should we be here? Vasan- 
tasena is adorable to all, and it is the mother who 
chooses and approves of the adorers. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Is there anything more foolish in the world than to 
spend money on Vasantasena? She has never cared 
for a man in her life, and there is not a man who has 
seen her dance who would not give his life for her. 

THIRD GAMBLER [tO SECOND GAMBLEr] 

Except your impeccable Charadutta. 

[119] 



THE TOY CART 



FIRST GAMBLER 



I tell you if Vasantasena did but lift the corner of her 
veil before him, your sober Charadutta, your model 
of all the virtues (he is wise, he won't dice with you), 
Charadutta, I say, would be kissing her feet before 
the veil was safely back over her eyes. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Charadutta would die rather than enter this house, 
or look into the eyes under that veil. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

What will you wager .^ 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Ten suvarnas. Pick up the cowries that you threw 

on the ground. 

GAMBLER picJcs up the cowries. At this moment 
vasantasena's maid looks anxiously through the 
curtain. 

second gambler 

Wait. Here is Mandanika! Perhaps Vasantasena is 
coming at last. Where is your mistress? 

maid [coming iri} 

That is what I want to know. She is with her mother, 
and where she has led her mother no one can know. 
Now it's here, now it's there, always as the whim of 
the moment takes her. I had to put all her best clothes 
and her best jewels on her! The gods send her back 
safe, these late thieving evenings ! 

[ 120 ] 



THE TOY CART 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Has Prince Samsthanaka been here lately? 

MAID 

Lately? Not a day, not an hour passes but he, or 
his messengers, or his body-servants with flowers, or 
his house-servants with heavy baskets, are here wait- 
ing for answers that never come. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

The prince is not used to wait for an answer. 

MAID 

Here he must learn it then, for Vasantasena will have 
none of him, though he is next to the king, and a man 
of great valour and learning. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Valour and learning, Mandanika? Who has told you 
this of him.f^ 

MAID 

He told me himself. But listen, I hear footsteps. 
Someone is coming. Is it Vasantasena .^^ 

She rushes to the door^ which opens, and rambha 

comes in, puffing and blowing. 
Where , , .? 

RAMBHA 

Here, of course. Take her to her room and help her 

to change her dress. 

VASANTASENA, Veiled and closely wrapped in chara- 
dutta's cloak f passes across the stage, and goes in 
at an inner door, followed by mandianka. 

[121] 



THE TOY CART 

Come, Charadutta, you must come in: no denial. 

Come. 

CHARADUTTA enters slowly, and as if unwillingly, 
followed by maitreya, who gazes curiously around. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Charadutta ! 

FIRST GAMBLER 

What was the wager? In any case, I have won it. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

This passes belief, and must be confirmed by the dice 
before I shall beUeve it. 

RAMBHA 

If you will be so good as to sit down. These gentlemen 
care only for dice and conversation, and will not dis- 
turb us. 

CHARADUTTA 

We have brought you home in safety: suffer us to 
retire. 

MAITREYA [wMspering'] 
Already? 

RAMBHA 

My daughter will not allow it. You are to sit down, 
and she will with be you in a moment. Ho, Pallava, 
Madha vika ! 

Women come in and offer refreshments to chara- 
dutta and MAITREYA. 

[122] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA [tO CHARADUTTA] 

Is it a house or a palace? Have you ever seen so many 
useless and beautiful things in a single room? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Though Charadutta is here, he would sooner be any- 
where else by the look in his eyes, and the uneasiness 
of his fingers. 

MAITREYA 

Did I not tell you? Did I tell you half? I should 
take you away from here at once, but the fact is I am 
far too well off myself to think of getting up from these 
heavenly cushions and setting down this nectar of 
Sudra. 

RAMBHA [to charadutta] 

Your friend does more justice to our humble hospitality 
than you do. 

CHARADUTTA 

My eyes are feasted with colour; what other sense 
need feast? 

MAITREYA 

If there should only be music in addition to all these 
luxuries of the senses, my poor friend is lost for ever. 

RAMBHA 

Ah, dear sir, if you knew the cost of the least small 
thing in the place. Every one of them bought with 
the best money. There remains little enough to one 
who, like myself, has to keep the house, as they say, 
going. And Vasantasena, who is so free with her 

[ns] 



THE TOY CART 

costliest jewels, always giving them away, giving away 
more than she gets, and to those who can have no 
pretence to deserve them. 

CHARADUTTA 

I once knew what pleasure it was to give gifts. Now 
I can only envy her. 

RAMBHA 

For that you have no good reason. She gives them 
away, throws them away, as if jewels were meant for 
the poor. 

CHARADUTTA 

The poor have rarely the chance of knowing that such 
things exist. To see them, worn by Vasantasena, is 
riches enough to a poor man. 

RAMBHA 

How can you talk of jewels .^^ 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Do you see how blackly the old witch looks into his 
eyes, mumbling words that she doesn't say to him? 
Charadutta is no welcome guest here. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Wait till Vasantasena returns. Who knows? I have 
won from you. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

I was not looking. Show me the dice. 

[124] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

I must bid farewell to Vasantasena. 

RAMBHA 

Tell Vasantasena that Charadutta is going. 
One of the women goes into the inner room, 

MAITREYA [rising slowly~\ 

Charadutta, I am sure it would be better to go before 
she comes back. We have time to go before she comes 
back. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Show me the dice, I say. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Here are the numbers. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Give me the dice into my hand! 

CHARADUTTA [with disgust, rising'] 
What is this angry talk.^ 

FIRST GAMBLER 

You cheated. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

What do you mean? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Give me the dice. Your dice were loaded. 

[125] 



THE TOY CART 

THIRD GAMBLER 

It is true. He has been cheating. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

You insult me. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Here are proofs. Give me back all that you have won 
from me, or I will call the officer of justice, and you 
shall be banished from the kingdom. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Let me go. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Give me back my money. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Give him back the ten suvarnas. 

In the midst of the hubbub the curtains over the inner 
room are thrust back, and vasantasena, dressed 
as a dancer, in gorgeous clothes, is seen standing, 
motionless, looking with disdain at the gamblers, 
the face of the maid visible over her shoulder. She 
stands there without a word, until suddenly the 
gamblers catch sight of her, and become silent. She 
comes slowly into the room, with scornful eyes, 

vasantasena 

Gentlemen, this is my house, and disputes are settled 
in the street. 

They go out confusedly, quarrelling, vasantasena 
turns apologetically to charadutta, and then says 
bitterly to her mother: 

[ 126 ] 



THE TOY CART 

These were your friends! [Jo Charadutta.'] My lord, 
may this be forgotten? 

CHARADUTTA 

It is forgotten aheady. But I must not wait here 
another moment. 

VASANTASENA 

Then you do not forget. 

CHARADUTTA 

You must not think that. A duty calls me; I must go 
back. 

VASANTASENA 

You are my guest. I have only music and dancing to 
welcome you; but do you not love musicf^ Nay, be 
seated. \^They sit down.2 

CHARADUTTA 

More than anything in the world. 

VASANTASENA 

I love music so much that my body follows it wherever 
it goes. When I dance, it is to say more clearly, and 
in my own voice, what music says. We will have 
music, and I will dance for you. Call in the musicians. 

MAID goes into the inner part of the house and 

returns presently with Musicians. 

CHARADUTTA 

I have often dreamed of a dance which should be more 
articulate, more human, than music: dance that dance 
to me, Vasantasena, for I have never seen it. 

[127] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

He must never see It. 

MAITREYA 

Now she will dance the heart out of his body. 

VASANTASENA 

Have you never thought how we, whose business is 
love, have learned to speak without speech, to sing 
without words, to express every emotion by a gesture? 
They teach us to dance, and we dance as they teach 
us; but there is something which no master can ever 
teach us. 

CHARADUTTA 

Have you learned that lesson which no master can 
teach you? 

VASANTASENA 

I am beginning to learn it. I will show you how it 
begins. But I will sing first, because words follow 
music the first part of the way. [^Sings'] 

How fair and how pleasant art thou, 

O love, for delights! 

As the apple upon the bough 

Thy sweetness invites. 

A fountain of gardens, a well 

Of water alone; 

A pomegranate fruit and the smell 

Of Lebanon. 

Awake, O north wind, and blow 

On my garden, O south! 

What spices are these that outflow 

From the kiss of her mouth? 

[ 128 ] 



THE TOY CART 

O vineyard, she is thy vine: 
What are aloes and myrrh? 
Her love is much better than wine: 
What is like unto her? 

CHARADUTTA 

A lover wrote it, and when you sing it, it makes every 
man a lover. 

VASANTASENA 

Shall I sing you or say you out of love then, and in a 
song of the same singer? But this is better for speak- 
ing than for singing. \^She repeats a song against love.'] 

There is a thing in the world that has been since the 

world began: 
The hatred of man for woman, the hatred of woman 

for man. 
When shall this thing be ended? When love ends, 

hatred ends. 
For love is a chain between foes, and love is a sword 

between friends. 
Shall there never be love without hatred? Not since 

the world began. 
Until man teach honour to woman, and woman teach 

pity to man. ^ 

O that a man might live his life for a little tide 
Without this rage in his heart, and without this foe 

at his side! 
He could eat and sleep and be merry and forget, he 

could live well enough, 
Were it not for this thing that remembers and hates, 

and that hurts and is love. 

[ 129 ] 



THE TOY CART 

But peace has not been in the world since love and 

the world began, 
For the man remembers the woman, and the woman 

remembers the man. 

CHARADUTTA 

That was written by a lover who knew all that goes 
to make up love, and you say it as if you knew that 
hate is the salt and savour of love. 

VASANTASENA 

Indeed I know no such thing; but speak what I have 
learned. If I give over words I shall have to speak 
truth, whether I will or not, for the body cannot lie. 

RAMBHA \_getting up and coming over to }ier~\ 
Vasantasena, you are not to dance. 

VASANTASENA 

Mother, I am going to dance. 

RAMBHA 

It kills you when you dance, and there are no princes 
here; no one will give you jewels and gold and slaves; 
you dance with too much of your soul and body. 

VASANTASENA 

I am going to dance. 

RAMBHA hobbles grumhlingly bach to her seat. 

[ 130 ] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

Now she is going to capture him; if she dies for it she 
will capture him. Will not anything keep her from 
dancing? 

CHARADUTTA 

Dance, Vasantasena! 

There is music; women come forward strewing 
roses y and slowly vasantasena rises, and steps for- 
ward. She dances a dance of slow and various 
movement, with pantomime; at the climax she 
crouches and utters a wordless song, hoarse and 
harsh, pathetic and terrible, after which she rises, 
takes a step, and staggers, as if about to fall. Mean- 
while, CHARADUTTA, towards whom her whole dance is 
directed, follows her motions in a low voice, like an 
undertone or accompaniment, interpreting them to 
himself, and falling gradually into an ecstasy, 
always restrained, and as if her soul were a mirror 
to her movements. At the last movement when she 
has come almost close to him, he catches her in his 
arms as she is about to fall. 

CHARADUTTA 

What is she dancing? It is the dawn, it is herself, 
it is spring, it is an awakening. It is the soul awaken- 
ing to love. And love comes as a little child, and 
she smiles to it, unafraid. And her eyes grow graver, 
and her mouth has tasted love like a rose-leaf, and the 
scent of roses is in her nostrils. Now she breathes 
more heavily, a delicious pain is in her eyes, and her 
hands reach after the hands of love. Her heart is 
full of a strange sorrow, which is sweeter than honey; 

[ 131 ] 



THE TOY CART 

knowledge comes into her eyes like an anguish and 
like a solace; her mouth thirsts and laughs; and the 
mouth of love is upon her mouth. Now she knows 
what joy is, and how near joy is to sorrow, and a 
langour of vehement peace envelops her. She is a 
garden of roses, she is the mystical rose of a garden 
of roses: the rose is full of joy in the wind that is in 
the garden of spices. O rose, rose, the joy of love is 
forever! But the wind is turning chill and she shivers, 
the rose trembles because the wind envelops her; and 
the sun has gone down, and it is evening, and the night 
begins to creep about her. She suffers cold, darkness 
and shame; she that was a flower has become a weed: 
shall not the weed be plucked up and cast out in the 
burning.? 

Here he is silent, while vasantasena sings her word- 
less song. 
O fate, the sickle of time, cut not down this weed that 
was a rose. Sharp death is upon her, she bows her 
head: is it too late? Is it too late for love.'^ 

He rushes forward and catches her in his arms as 
she falls. 

Vasantasena, was it all truth? Speak, answer me, 
Vasantasena ! 

She lies with closed eyes, and he lays her hack on 
the cushions, rambha, mandanika, and the women 
hurry up and press around her, holding salts and 
scents to her. 

RAMBHA 

1 knew it, I knew it. She is bewitched and will put 
an end to her own life in mere joy and intoxication. 
I beg you, sir, to stand back: do you wish literally to 
kill her? 

[132] 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

The tricks of a woman are numberless as the hairs of 
her head; what man shall count them? 

CHARADUTTA 

Awaken, Vasantasena. 

VASANTASENA looJcs up, and puts her hands silently 
on his. 

RAMBHA [to the singers and musicians'] 

You can all go ! They go out 

And now, my child, now that you have had your way, 
and danced all the breath out of your body, perhaps 
you will lie quiet a Httle. A servant enters 

Who called you? 

SERVANT 

Madam. 

RAMBHA 

Say and go. 

SERVANT 

The royal Prince Samsthanaka craves leave to enter. 

VASANTASENA [starting up] 
Never ! 

CHARADUTTA [drawing his sword] 

Vasantasena, give me leave! 

VASANTASENA [ca^c/imgr hold of him] 

No, no, you must stay here till he has gone. Mother, 
go to the prince and tell him that I will not see him, 

[ 133 ] 



THE TOY CART 

tell him that I will never see him, tell him whatever 
will make a man most hate a woman, that he may hate 
me and be gone out of my way for ever. 

RAMBHA 

I will go to him, my daughter, and he shall not come in 
to you, but I shall not say to him what you have said 
to me, or the worse things that you have not said to 
me. Come, Mandanika, lend me your arm: I cannot 
go quickly enough to where the prince is waiting. 

She hobbles out through the door on the lefty leaning 
on the MAID. MAITREYA goes ostentatiously to the 
other end of the room, and turns his back with a 
shrug upon charadutta and vasantasena. 

CHARADUTTA 

Why do you keep me back, when with one stroke of my 
sword I would have rid you of this enemy, and the 
hand of a tyrant worse than the tyrant on the throne? 

VASANTASENA 

Would you have done this for me? 

CHARADUTTA 

Let me go and I will do it. 

VASANTASENA 

Then I will hold you, for now I am more careful of 
your life than of my own. 

[134] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

What is my life worth, now that I am a beggar? But 
your life has the power and should have the immortality 
of the stars. 

VASANTASENA 

Promise me that you will be careful of your life as of 
a thing whose loss I must needs die of. Do not seek 
Samsthanaka! Let all such vermin be: he is a snake 
whose poison is death, and he seeks your life. 

CHARADUTTA 

I set my heel on no snake that does not lift up his 
head against me. 

VASANTASENA 

No more of him: my mother will be coming back, 
and this moment will be over. 

CHARADUTTA 

Why should this moment ever be over? If you wish 
it, why did you look at me in the garden of the temple 
at Kamsdeva? 

VASANTASENA 

I did not look at you. Some god looked at me through 
your eyes, and my being fainted, as Sanjna when her 
lord, the sun, looked at her. 

CHARADUTTA 

You looked at me, and I began to remember. 

VASANTASENA 

And I to forget. 

[135] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

What would you forget? 

VASANTASENA 

Everything. Every pleasure, I have no happiness to 
forget. 

CHARADUTTA 

You have made happiness for others. 

VASANTASENA 

Has one of them thanked me? 

CHARADUTTA 

Many have loved you. 

VASANTASENA 

Would one of them have thanked me for love? Of 
all who have come to me with gifts and tears, saying 
"Love me or I die," is there one who would have 
rejoiced if I had given him all myself, all my love? 
That is a gift much too costly for any man to accept. 

CHARADUTTA 

Vasantasena, give me that gift. 

VASANTASENA 

No, I will be kinder to you. For love of you I must 
not let you love me. 

CHARADUTTA 

You have called me; first your eyes spoke to me, and 
I came, not knowing why I came; now you have 

[136] 



THE TOY CART 

danced to me, and your body has spoken, and I know 
all your heart. You have thrown over me a net that 
you cannot loosen. 

VASANTASENA 

Charadutta, is this truth, or is it nothing but music? 

CHARADUTTA 

The music is over, the dance has spoken; it is my 
heart that you hear now. Will you tell me that you 
do not love me? 

VASANTASENA 

1 will not tell you. When I would say the name of 
another, why does the name of Charadutta come to 
my lips? When I speak to my maid, and know not 
what I have told her, and she smiles, why is it that I 
am so absent? Why is it that I am as an altar on 
which a perpetual fire has been lighted? 

CHARADUTTA 

I am a beggar, and have no gifts to bring. What will 
you ask of me that I may do for you? 

VASANTASENA 

Will you put out the perpetual fire? Many waters 
cannot put it out. Will you give me forgetfulness? 
Many bowls of sleep cannot drink down memory. 
Will you bring back the scent into dead roses, and 
bring back the honey to the honeycomb, and the 
grapes to the vineyard where they have been plucked 
and trodden in the winepress, and the feet of men are 

[137] 



THE TOY CART 

red with them, and their eyes drunken? I have been 
the rose of the garden, and the honey in the honey- 
comb, and the grapes in the vineyard. 

CHARADUTTA 

I am a beggar, but I can give you all this. Love is 
like light, and light washes the earth. 

VASANTASENA 

I thirst, but have I not drunk wine, and is there more 
wine in the world that shall slake this thirst in me? 
Oh, stranger, if I could be the friend of any man, if 
I could love and not destroy, if I could humble myself, 
if I could believe and forget, and if all that I have been 
could be forgotten, then would Vasantasena be the 
beggar at the feet of Charadutta. 

CHARADUTTA [kneeling'] 
The beggar at her feet ! 

VASANTASENA 

Rise, Charadutta! 

The MAID comes in hurriedly and whispers in her 
ear. charadutta rises, maitreya comes for- 
ward and touches him, 

maitreya 

I have been shutting my ears so long that I am only 
now able to realize that we are to go. I will accompany 
you, Charadutta. 

CHARADUTTA [vaguely] 
Are we going? 

[ 138 ] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

Go now. Alas! you must go. But to-morrow, meet 
me — to-morrow at noon in the old flower garden. I 
do not know if I can live so long. 

CHARADUTTA 

Death shall not delay me. 

MAITREYA 



CHARADUTTA 



MAITREYA 



Remember ! 
What? 
Aryaka ! 

CHARADUTTA [tO VASANTASENA] 

If a thing stronger than death delays me, and I do not 
come, believe me, wait for me. I will surely come. 

VASANTASENA 

I will believe you. I will wait for you. 

MAID takes CHARADUTTA and MAITREYA to the outer 
door and returns hurriedly to vasantasena. 

MAID 

Your mother has been talking smoothly to the prince 
all this time : she has taken him aside there ^she points 
to the outer court] so that he should not meet Chara- 
dutta; but she will not be able to hold him back much 
longer; he grows madder and madder, and will see 
you if he puts us all to the sword. 

[ 139 ] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA [with Concentrated rage'} 

He shall see me. Let him come in. 

The MAID goes out and returns presently, followed 
by SAMSTHANAKA and RAMBHA, who goes aside. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I am not angry with you, Vasantasena, though you 
have kept me waiting like a dog upon your threshold. 
I have the power of the kingdom in my hands; the 
power of my brother-in-law, who is the king; but I 
wait at your door, Vasantasena, like a dog upon the 
threshold. Why have you kept me waiting while 
you practised the songs that are meant for my enchant- 
ment .f* I heard your more than celestial voice. You 
were singing a song I have never heard before. 

VASANTASENA 

I was singing a new song. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Sing it to me, Vasantasena? I not only love singing, 
but I myself, though born royal, and able to command 
all singers of music, I also sing. My slaves prepare 
for me dishes fried in oil, and seasoned with assaf oetida : 
that is your only diet for a sweet voice. Another 
time I will sing to you, but now sing your song to me, 
Yasantasena. 

VASANTASENA 

I will not sing my new song to you. 

[ 140 ] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

How is that? I could command you. You are no 
better than a slave, a dancmg woman, a singer; I 
could have you beaten if I liked. I could have you 
beaten until you sang whatever I wanted. There is 
nothing I could not do. But I will not even com- 
mand you. I will entreat you. 

VASANTASENA 

It is useless. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You say it is useless and you are a woman. What is 
a woman when she speaks .f^ She is a bough in the 
wind. What are women such as you but a creeper 
that grows by the roadside, and the crow and peacock 
perch on the same branch? Are you not free to all 
men, and am I not a man as well as a prince? If it is 
because of Charadutta that you put me aside, remem- 
ber that Charadutta is a beggar, and, if a beggar stands 
in my light, he dies. 

VASANTASENA 

You have no power over Charadutta. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I gave way to him in his own house, because every man 
is king in his own house, and I will do nothing against 
the law. Am I not the law? But I am here that I 
may tell you for the last time that I will suffer no man 
to come between us. What I will becomes mine. 

[141] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

What is it that you will here, prince? 

SAMSTHANAEL^ 

Your love. 

VASANTASENA 

I have given it away. Charadutta has taken it. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

The beggar, Charadutta? I will give you the crown 
jewels ! 

RAMBHA 

My daughter! 

VASANTASENA [rising and moving slowly towards 
the inner door^ 

To-morrow, at noon, in the old flower garden, Chara- 
dutta will give me a flower. [She goes in.'] 

SAMSTHANAKA 

What shall I do to this seed of jackals, this brother to 
hyenas? Shall I grind his head between my teeth, 
as a nut is ground under a door? 

RAMBHA 

Nothing would be too bad for him, my good, kind 
prince. Let it be not less than heading and quartering. 
You see it is not my daughter at all that is against 
your royal highness, but only the beggarman, the 
dried rattling bean-stalk, that has bewitched her. 

[142] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I saw, I saw it clearly. She could not possibly have 
an aversion for me; it is this Brahmin that deludes 
her. We must remove Charadutta. 

RAMBHA 

Noble prince, if you could but. . . . 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Silence. I must consult my own mind. 

RAMBHA 

If you could only. . . . 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Woman, you will not allow me to think. I shall soon 
have a magnificent idea. Anger is fruitful to ideas 
and I have been mocked. I must have a large re- 
venge. I will think out my revenge, and take less time 
to execute than to invent it. 

RAMBHA [^creeping up and, whispering mysteriously 

in his ear^ 

Do you know to whom she has given all her jewels? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Her jewels? To whom? 

RAMBHA 

To Charadutta's child. 

[ 143 ] ' 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

To the child? 

RAMBHA 

The father will say he knows nothing of it; but I know 
what I have seen. 

f^;J SAMSTHANAKA 

She gave her jewels to Charadutta's child? 

RAMBHA 

All that she had upon her, heaped them like pebbles 
of the road in the child's toy cart. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

She gives him her jewels, and she will not take my 
jewels ! 

RAMBHA 

Sir, when she comes to hsten to me, by-and-by, she 
will take your jewels. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

He must be removed. Ah, I have it! "To-morrow, 
at noon, in the Old Flower Garden." He is to give 
her a flower! He shall never give her a flower. I 
will meet him on the way. I will give him his choice 
of deaths. I will meet her in his place. I will show 
her on my sword the blood of the man who was weaker 
than I; she has a strong soul, and will love the stronger 
of two men, and the man who is alive rather than a 
dead man. I will take men with me, lest he should 

[ 144 ] 



THE TOY CART 

escape me. I will win Vasantasena at the sword's 
point. Take this. [He gives rambha gold.'] And say 
nothing. 

RAMBHA 

My daughter will be well and safe? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Have no fear. And fear nothing if it should please 
her, rather than returning home, to follow me to the 
royal palace. 

RAMBHA 

You have given me only twenty pieces of gold. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You shall have more gold, you shall have as much 
gold as you want. See that she comes to the Garden. 
I will see that Charadutta does not come. And now 
call someone who can call my carriage for me. I go 
on foot only before gods and Brahmins. 

They go towards the door as the curtain falls, rambha 
hobbling obsequiously before the prince. 



CURTAIN 



[145] 



THE TOY CART 



ACT III 

The Old Flower Garden, with an open temple at one 
side. Enter samsthanaka and attendant. At in- 
tervals during the early part of the scene samstht^j^^aka 
picks flowers, until he has gradually made a large hunch. 
He seems to do it unconsciously as the thought of vasanta- 
SENA recurs to him. 

AMSTHANAKA [walking up and down"] 

Are my men ready for him; are they lying in wait on 
the road that he is sure to come? 

ATTENDANT 

Yes, my lord. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

When he comes they are to surround him, and, if he 
resists, kill him. 

ATTENDANT 

Yes, my lord. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Perhaps I should meet him face to face; it would be 
more royal; draw my sword upon him; but no, that 
would be to treat him as my equal, and he is only a 
Brahmin, and I am a prince. Is Charadutta a good 
fighter .f^ 

ATTENDANT 

It is said so, my lord. 

[146] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

One can never judge by reports. In any case he would 
not stand against me if he saw me sword in hand, Uke 
a king and the avenger of kings. There is a majesty 
in my aspect, is there not, son of a slave? 

ATTENDANT \ 

The majesty of Indra. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Need I condescend to the business? The slaying of 
a man is less to me than the stringing of a lute. My 
men shall deal with him. I will not meddle in it. 

ATTENDANT 

The way my lord chooses is always the way of wisdom. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Does a man suffer much when he is killed with the 
sword? You have seen men killed in battle. 

ATTENDANT 

A man who is killed in battle dies gladly; he touches 
joy for an instant and then rests for an eternity. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Why should I prepare joy or rest for Charadutta? 
I am too kind if I kill him with the sword. I would 
have him linger, and be without hope, and not be able 
to die. I would have him die of shame before death 

[147] 



THE TOY CART 

overtook him. Otherwise my revenge will be paltry, 
a mean man's revenge, not the judgment of a king. 
What would hurt Charadutta more than death? 

ATTENDANT 

His honour. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Are you sure of that? Strange, that dishonour should 
hurt more than death. I do not understand it. Tell 
me why you think this strange thing of Charadutta. 

ATTENDANT 

He has lost everything else; honour he has not lost; 
if he had to choose between losing life and losing 
honour, what could there be to make him hesitate? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

How do you know these things that are above your 
station? You are not to think of them any more. 
But you seem to know Charadutta, and I will believe 
you. Charadutta must not die until he has lost his 
honour. After that he shall lose his life. 

ATTENDANT 

My lord can do all things. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Let me take counsel with my mind. Stand further 
off, that I may have room to think. 

ATTENDANT TYioves a few stejps away, samsthanaka 

stands still with a fixed look. Pause. 
I have it. The jewels of Vasantasena! 

[148] 



THE TOY CART 

ATTENDANT [^coming forward] 
My lord. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I will accuse him of theft. He shall be brought before 
the court of law, he shall be convicted on evidence, 
he shall be condemned to death as a thief. I shall have 
killed more than his life. 

ATTENDANT 

It will be easier for my lord to have killed him by the 
sword. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Easier.? Then I will take the more diflScult way. 
If I could have him arrested before he can come to the 
garden! or, if not arrested, at least detained. I will 
find out a way. Some god who helps princes will 
open a way for me; perhaps the god whose empty 
shrine is before me. 

As he speaks the first gambler runs hurriedly in, 

FIRST GAMBLER 

In the name of all the gods, do not betray me! 

He walks backwards into the temple and sits down 
on the empty pedestal. He is immediately followed 
by others, who rush into the garden and look around 
in surprise. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

I saw him enter the garden; he must have taken 
sanctuary in the temple. 

[149] 



THE TOY CART 

SECOND GAMBLER 

He may hide in hell, but he shall not escape me till 
he has paid every farthing. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Let me ask this lord. My lord, we are following a 
gambler who has cheated us of ten suvarnas; has any 
man passed this way? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I have seen no one but the god. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

He must be inside. We will wait. Then he will think 
we have gone away, and he will come out, and we shall 
have him. Let us wait here in the porch of the temple. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Look, here are his footsteps. He was shaking with fear, 
every limb of him. I can see it by the marks of his 
feet, as they slipped and stumbled over the ground. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

The track is lost here; there are no more footmarks. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Hey, they are all reversed. He has walked backward 
into the temple. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

I thought the temple was empty; there used to be no 
image in it. What is this image .f^ 

[150] 



THE TOY CART 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Is it of wood, do you think? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

I think it is of stone. 

They show by their side-glances that they have recog- 
mzed the gambler. They go near him and put 
out their hands as if to feel. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

Never mind. Let us sit down and play out our game. 
They sit down under the pedestal, take out their 
cowries, scratch four compartments upon the ground 
and play. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Fourteen. 

Eleven. 

Fifteen. 



THIRD GAMBLER 



SECOND GAMBLER 



THIRD GAMBLER 



Now, if one had no money, the mere sound of the 
rattling of the dice would be as tantalizing as the 
sound of a drum to a king without a kingdom. 



SECOND GAMBLER 

Or a cup of strong drink to a drunkard. It is my 
throw. 

THIRD GAMBLER 

No, it is mine. 

[151] 



THE TOY CART 

FIRST GAMBLER \^jumping down] 
No, it is mine. [They seize him.] 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Now, hypocrite, villain, mocker of the gods, are 
you caught or not? Will you pay or no? Do you owe 
me ten suvarnas or no? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

If you will take your hands off me I will answer your 
questions one at a time. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Answer them all at once. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Yes, no, yes. 

SECOND GAMBLER 

What do you mean by yes, no, yes? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Let me explain to you in your ear. {_Aside^ If I pay 
you half the money will you let me off the rest? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Agreed. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Let me speak to him a moment. [Whispers to the 
THIRD GAMBLER.] I will give you Security for half the 
debt if you cry quits for the other half. 

[152] 



THE TOY CART 

THIRD GAMBLER 



Agreed. 



FIRST GAMBLER \jO SECOND GAMBLER oloud] 

You let me off half the debt? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

I do. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

And you give up half? 

THIRD GAMBLER 

I do. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Then good morning to you, gentlemen. [He turns as 
if to go.'] 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Not SO fast; where are you going? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Why look you, one of you has let me off one half, and 
the other has let me off another half. Is it not clear 
that I am quits for the whole? I wish you a good 
morning. 

SECOND GAMBLER [seiziug Mm] 

Stop a moment. You know my name, you know that 
I know a thing or two; you know if I am going to 
be done like this. Down with the whole sum, or you 
come with me to prison. 

[153] 



THE TOY CART 

FIRST GAMBLER 

O merciful sir! 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Pay and go free. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Where am I to get the money? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Sell your father. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Is my father here to sell? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Sell your mother. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Is my mother here to sell? 

SECOND GAMBLER 

Se]\. yourseK. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Myself? If anyone would only buy me! Who'll buy? 
Who'll buy? Here's a gentleman who will perhaps 
buy me for ten suvarnas. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Are you worth it? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Am I not a cat in climbing, a deer in running, a snake 
in twisting, a hawk in darting upon its prey? I am 
Maya in disguising myself, and Sarawasti in the gift 
of tongues. 

[154] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA. 

I buy you. You are the man I want. Here are ten 
suvarnas. Loose him and let him go. 

, SECOND GAMBLER 

The property is yours. 

Takes the money and they both go 

FIRST GAMBLER 

I am your slave for life. What shall I do for you.^^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Sir, I have a piece of work for you. If you do it you 
shall be rewarded, though seeing that I have bought 
you, you belong to me already. I am Prince Sams- 
thanaka, and I can reward you like a prince. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

My lord, I will be a hawk for you in the air: what is 
there I should see? I will be a wolf in seizing: what is 
there I should seize.? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Seize Charadutta. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

What, the new lover of Vasantasena? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Why do you think he is a lover of Vasantasena? 

[155] 



THE TOY CART 



FIRST GAMBLER 



It was at her house that I played dice once too often. 
Last night Charadutta was there. 

SAMSTHANAKA \i flinging down the flower s} 

You saw him? you? at her house? The thunder of all 
the gods blacken her and him ! That is why she would 
not let me in! I have not only been insulted, I have 
been deceived. If she were not more beautiful than 
the dawn I would put her to death with my own hands. 
If she were not more desirable than the dawn I would 
bring eternal night upon her. But first I will avenge 
myseK Upon Charadutta. I have the means, if you 
will do my service swiftly and without fault. 

FIRST GAMBLER 

Tell me, and I will do it. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Can you disguise yourseK as an officer of justice, 
intercept Charadutta, who is now on his way to this 
garden, and convey him secretly to my palace, where 
I will lodge a charge against him that he has stolen the 
jewels of Vasantasena? 

FIRST GAMBLER 

I have personated a god. Can I not personate an 
officer of justice? \JIe alters the arrangement of his 
clothes y and disguises his face.~] 

[156] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Go at once. Take no one with you. He will follow 
you in the name of the law. Go at once. 

GAMBLER Qoes out hurriedly. 
\_Turns to attendant} I have no further need of you nor 
of my men. Return home and leave me alone here. 

ATTENDANT QOeS. 

The sun sits like an angry ape in the sky; I breathe 
flame, and there is no shade under the trees. O 
Vasantasena, you burn my heart like the sun at noon- 
day. I wait for you, and I do not know if it is with 
love or hatred. 

There is a sound of wheels. He listens. 

She is here. She is sending away her carriage. She 
is alone. 

He sees the flowers, hurriedly picks them up, and then 
draws hack, in the shadow of a tree, vasantasena 
comes slowly forward, looking from side to side. 

vasantasena [^stopping and putting her hand to her 

eye] 

My right eye throbs: it is an evil omen. [_She catches 
sight of samsthanaka]. Ah ! 

SAMSTHANAKA \_speaking in tones of cold malice] 

Why do you stand with your eyes cast down to the 
earth, like cattle that hang their heads against the 
TSim? Why do you turn pale and shrink back, as if 
it were not I, Prince Samsthanaka, your lover, that 
you had come to meet? 

[ 157 1 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA \^ faintly, looking round as if for help} 
I did not come to meet you. 

SAMSTHANAKA [comiug nearer, and o;ffering her 

flowers} 

Here are flowers for my little Vasantasena, my dove, 
my gazelle; all the flowers of the garden wait for her; 
she has come to receive the gift, not of a flower, but 
of all the flowers of the garden. This garden was made 
to be a place of delight, and these trees were planted 
to give shelter to the unsheltered. Come under their 
shadow, for the sun is a flame in the sky. You are 
pale, Vasantasena: take these flowers and come into 
the shadow of the trees. 

He offers her the flowers hut she does not take them, 
and they fall to the ground between them. 

VASANTASENA 

I will not come out of the sun. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You have cast away my flowers, Vasantasena. Yet 
you came here for a flower. No one is here to give 
you that flower. Look around, he is not here. He is 
not anywhere among the trees; he is not hiding in the 
temple; he is not even under the ground. 

VASANTASENA [^eagerly} 
What do you mean.^^ 

[158] 



THE TOY CART 



SAMSTHANAKA 



Has Charadutta already forgotten that he was to meet 
you? You see he does not come. If he were here 
I would go away. I take the place of the absent. 



VASAJSTTASENA 

What have you done to him.? something stronger than 
death, he said: what have you done to Charadutta? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You are a dancing girl, Vasantasena, you are the mart 
of love, you are the mine of pleasure. It is your trade 
to welcome alike the man whom you love and the man 
whom you do not love. Why, even if you do not love 
me, have you always spurned me? Why do you turn 
your eyes and your heart only on the man who is not 
here, on Charadutta? It is not too late, Vasantasena. 
And as for Charadutta, you see that he is not here. 
[He comes closer to herr\ 

VASANTASENA 

Why is he not here? O where is Charadutta? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Do not ask me, Vasantasena. He is not here, yet you 
run after him. 

VASANTASENA 

I will run after him until I find him. Let me pass, 
perhaps he is here, somewhere in the garden. 

[159] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Listen. This man is a beggar, and a beggar is an 
empty pool. 

VASANTASENA 

The pool is full to the brim whose water is unfit for 
drinking. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Will you always scorn me? And is it always for his 
sake that you scorn me.'^ 

VASANTASENA 

Let me go to him. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

He is not here. But I am here, Vasantasena. 

VASANTASENA 

Shall the swan's mate harbour with crows? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You are a strangling creeper. You are a deadly weed. 
You must be rooted up out of the garden. 

VASANTASENA 

Let me go. I am afraid of your eyes and your hands. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Do you see these hands? These ten fingers are not 
the petals of the lotus. What if they should take you 
by the hair of your head as Jatayn seized the wife of 
Bali? 

[160] 



THE TOY CART 



VASANTASENA 



Why do you cry upon me as if I had done you a wrong? 
I have done you no wrong. Let me go, let me go home. 
[^She turns and tries to pass^l 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Do you see these hands? It is not with henna that 
they are red. It is not the sun that bHnds me as I 
look upon you. What shall I do to the woman who 
has spurned me as jackals spurn carrion? 

VASANTASENA 

Let me go. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

The tiger does not only kill. Why should I kill you 
when you might live for my delight? Choose! 

VASANTASENA 

There is nothing to choose. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Are you not in my power? 

VASANTASENA 

My body, not my innocence. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

We are alone; who shall see us? 

[161] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

The ten points of the compass, the eyes of the wood- 
gods, the moon, the sun that now burns upon us, the 
judge of the dead, the wind, the air, your conscience, 
and the earth : these are the witnesses of all things. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I will cast my cloak over you and you shall not be seen. 

VASANTASENA 

Are you mad? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I fear nothing, and I will do a great deed. Are you 
ready to die, Vasantasena? 

VASANTASENA 

No, no, I am not ready to die. I have not lived yet. 
Let me go. [Jn struggling with him she strikes him in 
the face.~\ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

A woman has struck me, a light woman. She must 
die. 

VASANTASENA 

Have pity on me, have pity! O I cannot die. \_She 
falls on her knees before him.'] 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Do jackals fly or crows run.? Then how should I have 
pity.f^ [He takes ojf his girdle and makes a noose of it] 

[ 162 ] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

Mother, where are you? O Charadutta, I shall die 
and I shall not have known your love. The gods bless 
Charadutta! 

SAMSTHANAKA [drawing the noose about her neck~\ 
That name ! again, daughter of a slave ! 

VASANTASENA [in a holj-choked voice'] 
The gods bless Charadutta! 

She falls motionless on the ground, samsthanaka 
leans over her, then looJcs up and around, moves 
away, comes bacJc and gazes down at her, then takes 
o;ff his cloak and is laying it over her when he notices 
the arms embroidered on it; snatches back his cloak, 
looks helplessly and anxiously round, then gathers 
handfuls of dry leaves and covers her body. Then 
furtively and stealthily hurries out. There is a 
pause. Then a rough voice is heard singing in a 
kind of slow chant, like an old beggar, and mendicant 
FRIAR comes in. He carries a rosary in his hand, 
a wallet of black deerskin at his side, an ochre-red 
cloak over his arm; he has a long beard, 

MENDICANT [sings] 

Good fellow-men, I bid you heap 
Good deeds, and halter appetite; 
The drum of meditation keep 
Your souls awake, lest in the night. 
The thieving senses at the door 
Break in and take away your store. 

[163] 



THE TOY CART 

He who has slain the senses five. 
Five brethren, and the hangman self. 
Nor left poor ignorance alive, 
Has conquered heaven for himself. 
What profits it a shaven head? 
Show me a shaven soul instead. 

Shade at last, and the hour advises me to rest. I have 
washed my cloak; where shall I put it to dry? I will 
hang it on the boughs of this tree. No, they are too 
high: I will lay it on the ground. No, there is too 
much dust. Ah! the wind has blown together a heap 
of dry leaves: I will put it there. There, it will soon 
be dry. 

He spreads out his cloak over the body of vasan- 
TASENA and sits down a little way off against a tree. 

Glory to Buddha! How beautifully everything in the 
world is adapted to its purpose. Here am I, a mendi- 
cant friar, begging my way about the world. I have 
come to this city, which is the most virtuous city in this 
region; in this city I come by mere good fortune to 
the Old Flower Garden, which is the most famous 
garden in the city: I find a pond to wash my cloak 
in, a shady tree to sit under, and I am alone, far from 
the enemities of men and the too pleasing wiles of 
women, where I can meditate on the divine perfections. 
I will close my eyes and repeat the sacred "Om." 
What was that? 

He sits up and looks round. 
Something stirred or sighed in the leaves. Ah, it was 
only the crackling of the scorched leaves under the 
wetness of my cloak. I will compose myself to medi- 
tation; I will think neither upon my sins, which are of 

[164] 



THE TOY CART 

old, nor upon the virtues which I would acquire; 
but I will gaze fixedly at the leaves yonder, on which 
I have laid my cloak and I will repeat — O what is 
this? The leaves spread outward like the wings of a 
bird? And there is a hand, a woman's hand, with 
rich ornaments on it. What can this mean? The 
gods preserve me from pollution! 

He rises and draws his cloak carefully away, dis- 
closing VASANTASENA, who Ues at full length. She 
feebly raises her hand and points to her mouth. 

She wants water: the pool is far away: what can I do? 
Ah, my cloak is still wet. [_He squeezes some water out 
of his cloak upon her face, and fans her with it.^ 

VASANTASENA [raising her head^ 
Thanks, friend. Who are you? 

MENDICANT 

I am a mendicant friar. I was meditating in this 
garden of peace. 

VASANTASENA 

Of peace ! 

MENDICANT 

What has befallen you, lady? 

VASANTASENA 

I think I have been dead. 

MENDICANT 

Rise, lady. 

VASANTASENA 

I cannot rise; give me your hand. 

[ 165 ] 



THE TOY CART 

MENDICANT 

That I may not do; take hold of this creeper and raise 
yourself. 

He bends down to her a creeper on the trees; she 

lays hold of it and draws herself up. 
Come, I will lead you. 

VASANTASENA 

I cannot walk. 

MENDICANT 

If you will take hold of this, I will lead you, and I shall 
not have broken my oath, which forbids me to touch 
a woman. 

VASANTASENA 

I cannot go far. 

MENDICANT 

There is a convent close by; you shall rest there, and 
recover your strength. Come, lady, gently. 

VASANTASENA 

Am I really alive? \^She walks feebly y holding the end 
of the creeper.^ 

MENDICANT 

What should the just man care for life or death .^^ His 
is the world to come. 
They go out together. 

CURTAIN 



[166] 



THE TOY CART 



ACT IV 

The Hall of Justice. The judge, the provost, and the 
RECORDER Seated. People standing; at the hack sams- 

THANAKA. 

CRIER 

Give ear, all men, to the words of the judge! 

JUDGE {rising~\ 

I am here to do justice, on the just and on the unjust 
alike. A judge should be learned, wise, eloquent, dis- 
passionate, impartial; he should pronounce judgment 
only after due enquiry and deliberation; he should be 
a guardian to the weak, a terror to the wicked; his 
heart should be without covetousness, his mind intent 
only on truth and equity, and his should it be to keep 
aloof the anger of the king. 

PROVOST 

Your worship has painted his own picture in deline- 
ating the features of the perfect judge. 

RECORDER 

You shall be taxed with favour when the moon is 
charged with obscurity. 

JUDGE 

The quality of a judge is readily the subject of censure. 
It is always hard to see into the hearts of others, and 

[167] 



THE TOY CART 

hard also is it to disentangle the coils of their doings. 
How often is truth far from the lips of men, and how 
often is an accusation brought against the innocent. 
Justice is in the hands of the gods alone; it is enough 
for us if we will to be just, and put our trust in the 
justice of the gods. [_He seats himself.'] Officer, go 
forth and see who comes to demand justice. 

OFFICER goes to the other end of the court and cries: 

OFFICER 

By order of his honour, the judge, I ask who is there 
that demands justice.^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I, the king's brother-in-law. 

JUDGE 

This is out of order. There are other cases that have 
to be tried first. Go to him and tell him that his case 
cannot be tried to-day. 

OFFICER [_go{ng down the Hall} 

I am desired to inform your excellency that your case 
cannot be tried to-day. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

How, not to-day? Tell the judge that I shall go 
straight to the king, my brother-in-law, and that I 
shall have him dismissed from his office, and his office 
given to another. My case is to be heard to-day. 

OFFICER 

Stay one moment, your honour, and I will carry your 
message to the Court. [He goes back to the judge.] 

[168] 



THE TOY CART 

Please your worship, his excellency is very angry, and 
declares if you will not try his suit to-day he will go 
to the king and procure your worship's dismissal. 

JUDGE 

It is in the fool's power. He must be heard. Call 
him, and let him come hither. 

OFFICER 

Will your excellency be pleased to come forward? 
Your case will be heard. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

indeed! first it could not be heard; now it will be 
heard. Very well: the judges fear me: they will do 
my will. \^He goes up to the judges r\ I am well pleased, 
gentlemen, by your decision; it is for you also to be 
well pleased, for your good pleasure lies in my hands. 

JUDGE \^aside2 
Is this the language of a plaintiff.? Be seated. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Assuredly. Are not all these places mine, and shall 

1 not be seated where I please? [To the provost] I will 
sit here. No. [To the recorder] I will sit here; no 
no. [To the judge, laying his hand on his shoulder r\ 
I will sit here. 

judge 

Your excellency has a complaint to bring? 

[169] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I have indeed. 

JUDGE 

Prefer it. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

All in good time. Do not forget that I am of noble 
family, that my father is the king's father-in-law, the 
king is my father's son-in-law, I am the brother-in-law 
of the king. 

JUDGE 

All this we know; but what have birth and rank to 
do with virtue? Thorns grow most plentifully on the 
richest soil. Declare therefore your suit. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

It is this; but it is no fault of mine. My noble brother- 
in-law, for his good pleasure, presented me, for my 
ease and recreation, with the fairest of the royal 
gardens, the Old Flower Garden. I go there daily, 
to see that it is well kept and weeded and in order. 
To-day I go there as usual, and what do I see (how 
could I believe my eyes.^) but the dead body of a 
murdered woman! 

JUDGE 

Did you recognize the woman .f* 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Alas, how could I fail to recognize her, the pride of 
our city, all her jewels gone from her, stolen no doubt 
by some miscreant who had lured her into the lonely 
garden .f^ I saw Vasantasena, strangled by his hands, 
not by me. [He breaks short.~\ 

[ 170 1 



THE TOY CART 

JUDGE 

The city is ill guarded. Gentlemen, you have heard 
the complaint; let it be recorded, including the words 
"not by me." 

RECORDER [writing^ 
It is written. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

What have I said? My lords, I was going to say, not 
by me was the deed beheld. It is not necessary to 
note down these mere trifles. 

JUDGE 

How, then, if you did not see it done, do you know 
that Vasantasena was strangled, and for the sake of 
her jewels? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I conclude so, for the neck was bare and swollen, and 
her dress rifled of its jewels. 

PROVOST 

It seems like enough. 

SAMSTHANAKA [^aside] 
I breathe again. 

JUDGE 

First of all, let officers be sent with speed to the Old 
Flower Garden, and let them bring hither the body 
of the murdered woman. 

Officers go out. There is a stir in the court, and the 
FIRST GAMBLER comcs in hurriedly and makes signs 
to SAMSTHANAKA, who Uaves his place and goes aside 
with him. 

[1711 



THE TOY CART 



GAMBLER 

My lord, I have failed. I have found Charadutta 
nowhere, though I have searched every corner of the 
city. I have failed to delay him from my lord's path. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Fool, the god whose place you took in the temple has 
done better than you. A murder has been committed 
in the garden: remember, it was Charadutta who did 
it, and he did it for the jewels of Vasantasena. 
He goes hack to his place. 

PROVOST 

On what further evidence does this suit depend? 

JUDGE 

The case is twofold, and must be investigated both in 
relation to facts and to assertions; the verbal in- 
vestigation relates to plaintiff and respondent, that of 
facts depends upon the judge. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

My lords, I have further evidence to give, I have an 
accusation to make. 

JUDGE 

Whom do you accuse? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I accuse Charadutta. 

[172] 



THE TOY CART 

JUDGE 

Prince, you are jesting. It were as easy to weigh 
Himalaya, to ford the ocean, or to grasp the wind, as 
to fix a stain on Charadutta. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I have evidence. 

JUDGE 

Give your evidence. And meanwhile let Charadutta 
be summoned, not as one accused, but as one who would 
rather that evil tales were told of him to his face than 
behind his back. Say, at his perfect convenience. 
Officer is going out. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I demand the mother of Vasantasena as a witness. 

JUDGE 

Let her be summoned, but with all courtesy. 

OFFICER goes out and returns immediately with 

RAMBHA. 

OFFICER 

She was waiting outside the court. 

RAMBHA 

My lords, my lords, where is my daughter? O my 
heart! I am fainting, what with the heat and the 
emotion. Will your worships allow me to sit down? , 

JUDGE 

Be seated. 

[ 1*^3 ] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

What have I heard? What has happened to my 
daughter? 

JUDGE 

You are the mother of Vasantasena? 

RAMBHA 

I am. 

JUDGE 

Where is your daughter? 

RAMBHA 

That is what I ask? Where is my daughter? 

JUDGE 

You are not to ask questions. You are to answer 
them. Where did you last see your daughter? 

RAMBHA 

She was preparing to go to meet a friend. 

JUDGE 

Where was she to meet this friend? 

RAMBHA 

In the Old Flower Garden. 

JUDGE 

The name of the friend? 

[174] 



THE TOY CART 

RAMBHA 

Surely, your worship, that is not a fit question for your 
worship to ask? 

JUDGE 

No hesitation. The law asks the question. 

PROVOST 

Speak out, there is no harm in saying it. The law 
asks the question. 

RAMBHA 

Well then, gentlemen, to tell the truth, as you insist 
upon it, and the very own truth it is (not that I ever 
spoke otherwise), the friend is a good gentleman who 
is the son of Sagaradatta, who was the son of the 
Provost Vinayaddatta, whose own name is Charadutta. 
He lives near the Exchange. My daughter went to 
meet him this morning in the Old Flower Garden. 
Where is my daughter .^^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You hear, judges: let this be set down in writing. It 
is Charadutta whom I have accused. You see that he 
is guilty. 

PROVOST 

He is her friend: what is more natural than that she 
should go to meet him.f^ 

RAMBHA 

My lords, tell me where is my daughter? 
CHARADUTTA enters with the officer, 

[175] 



THE TOY CART 

RECORDER 

Here is Charadutta : such straight features could never 
hide a crooked mind. 

JUDGE 

Sir, be seated. Officer, a seat. 

OFFICER 

It is here. Be seated, Sir. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

All this pother for a woman-killer! But never mind. 

JUDGE 

Noble Charadutta, I have to ask you _ any intimacy 
or connection has ever subsisted between you and the 
daughter of this woman .'^ 

CHARADUTTA 

What woman .f* 

JUDGE 

This. 

CHARADUTTA [rising'] 

Lady, I salute you. 

RAMBHA 

Sir, is it you that . . . 

JUDGE 

Be silent. And now tell me, Charadutta, were you 
ever acquainted with Vasantasena.f* 
CHARADUTTA hesitates. 

[ 176 ] 



THE TOY CART 



SAMSTHANAKA 



See how modest he is or pretends to be! But it is a 
cloak, a cloak. 

PROVOST 

Do not hesitate, Charadutta. There is a charge 
against you. 

CHARADUTTA 

What if Vasantasena were my friend .^^ 

JUDGE 

No evasion, Charadutta. The law obliges you to 
speak out, and to speak the whole truth. 

CHARADUTTA 

First tell me who is my accuser. 

SAMSTHANAKA \jising'] 
I am. 

CHARADUTTA [contemptuously] 

You! Then it is a serious matter. 

SAMSTHANAEA. 

A serious matter indeed. What! Do you think you 
are going to rob and murder a woman and that no one 
is ever to know of it.f^ 

CHARADUTTA 

Are you out of your mind.^^ What do you mean? 

[ 177 ] 



THE TOY CART 



JUDGE 



Enough of this. Tell me, was Vasantasena your 
friend? 

CHARADUTTA 

She was, she is. Why do you say she was.^* Tell me 
what all this means .^^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You see his agitation? Guilt will out. 

JUDGE 

When did you last see her? 

CHARADUTTA 

At her house last night. 

JUDGE 

And what appointment did she make with you? 

CHARADUTTA 

Appointment? 

JUDGE 

You are to answer. 

CHARADUTTA 

I promised to meet her at noon to-day in the Old 
Flower Garden. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You hear, judges; you hear him confess his crime? 

[ 178 ] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Sirs, what is this talk of crime? You want to make me 
beUeve that some terrible thing has happened to 
Vasantasena. But you will not tell me what it is? 
Why do you torture me? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

You hear the guilty wretch? He betrays himself. 

JUDGE 

Be silent, both of you. And tell me, Charadutta, did 
you meet Vasantasena at noon in the Old Flower 
Garden as you had appointed? 

CHARADUTTA 

I did not. 

JUDGE 

Why? 

CHARADUTTA 

I was unavoidably prevented. 

PROVOST 

This sounds strange. 

JUDGE 

You were prevented from keeping such an appoint- 
ment? What prevented you? 

CHARADUTTA 

I cannot tell you. 

JUDGE 

I must insist upon an answer. 

[ 179 ] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

I cannot answer you. 

JUDGE 

You endanger your life by your silence. For the sake 
of your honour I command you to answer. 

CHARADUTTA 

It is my honour that forbids me to answer. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Listen to him, my lord? He has confessed all. He was 
going to the garden, he did not go to the garden, he 
cannot say where he went when he did not go to the 
garden. He is condemned out of his own mouth. 
Give sentence on him. 

JUDGE 

My lord, I am the judge here and not you. I am here 
to weigh truth and falsehood to hear evidence, and 
to learn truth. Sit down in your place and be silent. 

RECORDER [tO PROVOSt] 

It is strange that Charadutta will not answer. 

PROVOST 

It is so much against him. 

JUDGE 

Have the officers returned from the garden? 

OFFICER 

They are here, my lord. 

[180] 



THE TOY CART 

JUDGE 

Let them come forward. 

An OFFICER comes forward. 
Tell me, what you have seen and done? 

OFFICER 

We went with haste, my lord, to the Old Flower 
Garden, and we found that the body of a woman had 
been there, but beasts of prey had seized upon it and 
devoured it. 

JUDGE 

How do you know that it was the body of a woman? 

OFFICER 

By the remains of the hair, and the marks of the hands 
and feet. 

RAMBHA 

O Vasantasena is really and truly dead, and I am alive 
to hear it? Accursed be the evil-doer that has done 
it. Is it you, beggar and murderer? [^She shakes her 
fist at Charaduttar\ 

CHARADUTTA {cis if stuuned} 
Dead! dead! Vasantasena dead! 

PROVOST 

Do you hear what he says? He does not know what 
he is saying. 

JUDGE 

Charadutta, you are accused by the Prince Sams- 
thanaka of the murder of Vasantasena: have you any 
defence to make? 

[181] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Dead! and I might have saved her. 

RECORDER 

He means he might have repented in time. 

JUDGE 

Answer me: have you any defence to make? 

CHARADUTTA 

None. 

JUDGE 

Where were you at the time of the murder? 

CHARADUTTA 

I cannot tell you. 

JUDGE 

Do you then plead guilty? 

CHARADUTTA 

No. 

JUDGE [to SAMSTHANAKA] 

Why do you accuse Charadutta? What proof have 
you of your accusation? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

My lord, what proof can there be but one? The 
jewels of Vasantasena ! 

JUDGE 

If they had been found, but they have not been found. 

[182] 



THE TOY CART 



SAMSTHANAKA 



They have not been sought for. Where should they 
be but in the house of Charadutta? Send oflScers, 
my lords, to the house of Charadutta; see whether 
the jewels that Vasantasena was accustomed to wear 
are not to be found there. Those jewels, if they are 
found in that impoverished house, will speak the 
truth louder than I, they will at once prove the crime 
and show the reason of the crime. 

CHARADUTTA 

Let my guilt rest on this question. Search my house, 
and if a single jewel of Vasantasena is found there, 
let me be held guilty of a viler thing than murder. 

JUDGE 

Go, let the house be searched. [Officers go out.~\ 
Again, Charadutta, it is for your sake that I search 
fully into the matter. Innocence fears no exposure, 
and though the evidence so far is against you I do not 
doubt that this last accusation will turn to your favour. 

CHARADUTTA 

How can I care any longer if I am found guilty or 
innocent if Vasantasena is really dead.^^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

It is the hypocrite who speaks. Wait, you will see the 
hypocrite confounded, the robber disclosed, the mur- 
derer convicted. 

[183] 



THE TOY CART 



RAMBHA 



This IS a matter, my lords, in which it would be well 
for you to call me as a witness. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Do not listen to her; what has she to do with this 
matter? This is a fact to be made evident; not an 
argument to be decided. 

JUDGE 

Charadutta, do you desire the evidence of Vasan- 
tasena's mother.f^ 

CHARADUTTA 

I need no evidence. I await the test. 

RAMBHA 

Very well, my good sir. I have no wish to press into 
the company of my betters, whether it be to do good 
to them or to do harm to them. I am sure it is Prince 
Samsthanaka who knows all about it, and what he 
finds out will be sure to be the truth. [^She looks 
im'pudently at samsthanaka.] 

JUDGE 

Has the officer returned from the house of Charadutta.?^ 
An OFFICER carrying the toy cart containing the 
jewels of vasantasena comes forward, followed by 
MAiTREYA in great agitation, maitreya thrusts 
himself forward. 



MAITREYA 

Friend, peace be with you! 

[184] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Perhaps I shall find it again. 

MAITREYA 

What is this? Why are you here? Why have these 
men forced their way into your house? 

JUDGE 

Be silent there, and let the officer come forward and 
deliver his report. 

OFFICER 

My lords, I went to the house of Charadutta, and this 
man offered violent resistance to my entry. I went in, 
and had not searched long before I found, thrust aside 
into a corner as if to escape observation, a child's 
toy cart filled with jewels. It is here. [He hands it 
to the judge.'] 

JUDGE , 

What is this, Charadutta? 

CHARADUTTA 

Either I am bewitched . . . 

JUDGE [to RAMBHa] 

Are these the jewels of your daughter? 

SAMSTHANAKA gets wp and goes down as if to examine 
them, 

RAMBHA 

I must see them closely: give them into my hands; 
my eyes are old. 

[185] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA ^^Significantly] 
Tell the truth. 

JUDGE 

Are these ornaments your daughter's? 

RAMBHA [jpeering into therri] 

They are very Uke, I would not be saying they are the 
same. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Fifty suvarnas if you tell the truth. 

PROVOST 

Surely you will know them if they are your daughter's? 

RAMBHA [to SAMSTHANAKA] 

I want a hundred. Well, well, it is difficult to trust 
one's eyes, what with these cunning workmen. They 
are very like. 

SAMSTHANAKA [cLside] 

A hundred then. 

JUDGE 

You cannot declare on oath that they are not your 
daughter's? 

RAMBHA 

My lord, I have no doubt about them now. I have 
recognized them by a secret sign. They are my 
daughter's. 

JUDGE [to CHARADUTTA] 

Does she speak the truth? 

CHARADUTTA 

Yes. 

[186] 



THE TOY CART 

JUDGE 

How have they come into your possession? 

CHARADUTTA 

I do not know. Some enemy has done this. 

JUDGE 

Again you will not answer me. 

CHARADUTTA 

I have nothing to answer. The gods are in league 
against me. \^He looks wildly round him and says as 
if speaking to himself:^ I seem to be dreaming, and yet 
I am awake, and you are the judge, and you are de- 
bating about my life, and Vasantasena is dead, and 
yet I cannot awaken. 

JUDGE 

Officer, remove him from his seat. 

OFFICER takes his seat from charadutta. 

CHARADUTTA 

Do you see, Maitreya? I must not sit down before 
these lords or, if I do, only in the dust. But what 
does it matter.'* 

MAITREYA [^pointing to samsthanaka] 
There is the enemy who has done this! 

SAMSTHANAKA [laughing scornfully'] 

Little Brahmin, have a care. Your virtuous friend 
there has killed Vasantasena and robbed her of her 
jewels, and if you are not careful I will have you 
arrested for helping him in the matter. 

[187 1 



THE TOY CART 

MAITREYA 

Son of an adultress, monkey tricked out with gold, 
stuffed stock of vices, it is you, you, who dare to 
accuse this man who has never plucked a flower roughly 
from its stalk — you accuse him of a crime more 
hateful than has ever been seen in this world! I will 
break your head into a thousand pieces with this 
staff, as knotty and crooked as your own heart! If 
I could only say what I know! 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Listen, my lords, to this suspicious violence. They 
are in league together. 

CHARADUTTA 

Maitreya, my friend, be silent. For my sake. 

JUDGE 

Stay, let your inconsiderate friend give witness on 
your behalf. I see only one chance for you. Sir, 
you seem by your language to be an intimate friend 
of Charadutta? 

MAITREYA 

I am his slave: he is my benefactor. 

JUDGE 

Well and good. And you are frequently in his com- 
pany.? 

MAITREYA 

He is rarely out of my sight. 

[188] 



THE TOY CART 

JUDGE 

Were you with Charadutta at noon to-day? 

MAITREYA 

Yes — no. 

CHARADUTTA looks at Mm fixedly, and slightly raises 
his hand. 

JUDGE 

You were not? 

MAITREYA 

No. 

JUDGE 

Where was Charadutta at that hour? 

CHARADUTTA looks at Mm more fixedly. 

MAITREYA \^slowly'} 

I do not know. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Judge, pass sentence. Is there further cause for delay? 

JUDGE [^speaks aside with provost and recorder, 

then rises^ 
Charadutta, it rests now only with you to confess the 
crime which has been proved against you. The evi- 
dence is complete, the charge has been substantiated 
on every point, and you can give no account of your- 
self at the time when the murder must have been 
committed. That which has seemed to our minds 
incredible, has none the less been proved to the con- 
viction of our minds. It is better, at the last moment, 
to admit the truth, rather than to add falsehood to 
dishonour. Charadutta, are you guilty of the murder 
of Vasantasena? 

[189] 



THE TOY CART 



CHARADUTTA 



I am of a race incapable of crime. But what is it to 
me if I am innocent and a crime is imputed to me which 
I cannot gainsay? If Vasantasena is dead, of what 
use is life to me? Have your way. What is it I 
am to say after you? 

SAMSTHANAKA 

That you killed Vasantasena: say that you killed her. 



You have said it. 



Sentence, my lord. 



CHARADUTTA 



SAMSTHANAKA 



JUDGE 



Charadutta, you have confessed that you are guilty 
of the murder of Vasantasena. This is your sentence: 
the ornaments of Vasantasena be hung about your neck, 
and that you be conducted by beat of drum to the 
place of execution in the southern cemetery, and that 
you be there beheaded by the public executioner, and 
your body impaled upon a stake for a warning to all 
malefactors in the kingdom of our supreme lord and 
king. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Let the king's justice be done. 

CHARADUTTA 

Let the justice of the gods be done. 

The curtain falls as the officers lay hold on chara- 
dutta. 

[ 190 ] 



THE TOY CART 



ACT V 

A place of execution, an open space at the cross-roadsy 
by the side of the public cemetery. A crowd is assembled, 

FIRST BYSTANDER 

Are they nearly here? 

SECOND BYSTANDER 

Nearly. The Chandalas are leading Charadutta by 
way of the four stations, and at each station they read 
the proclamation. He must be nearer now to the 
fourth than to the third. 

FIRST BYSTANDER 

What a pilgrimage! The shame will be more to him 
than death itself. He was the proudest man in the 
city. 

SECOND BYSTANDER 

Do you believe he is really guilty? 

FIRST BYSTANDER 

How is it possible either to doubt or believe it? 

THIRD BYSTANDER 

I salute you, neighbours. Are you here for the cere- 
mony? They tell me it is not the only one. Is it 
true that Aryaka has escaped? 

[1911 



THE TOY CART 

SECOND BYSTANDER 

It is perfectly true. He has got through the gates, 
nobody knows how. They flock to him from all sides. 

THIRD BYSTANDER 

Do you think anyone here would be averse to a change 
of dynasty? 

FIRST BYSTANDER 

Hush! it is better to wait and accept whatever comes 
to pass. Perhaps Charadutta will be the last victim 
of Palaka. 

SECOND BYSTANDER 

Is he not a friend of Aryaka? 

THIRD BYSTANDER 

Would that Aryaka were here to help him. 

FOURTH BYSTANDER 

They are coming, they are coming. 

A CHILD 

Lift me up, father. I want to see them. The man 
is hung all over with garlands. Are they going to 
offer him up to the gods.f^ 

FOURTH BYSTANDER 

Yes, my son. 

CHILD 

But I do not see any priests. Why does he carry 
a sharp stake over his shoulder! 

[192] 



THE TOY CART 

FOURTH BYSTANDER 

You will see presently. Get down now, and wait till 
the Chandalas stop here. This is the best place for 
seeing. 

FIRST BYSTANDER 

Is this the face of a criminal? He steps as noble as a 
beast led to the sacrifice. But it is a sacrifice that 
will not please the gods. 

CHARADUTTA appears between the two chandalas, 
garlanded with flowers ^ like a beast led to the sacrifice, 
and with the jewels of vasantasena tied round his 
neck. He bears on his shoulder the stake with which 
he is to be impaled. His clothes are covered with 
dust; his face is pale and weary. 

first chandala 

Out of the way, sirs, out of the way for Charadutta, 
all good people who stand about here to see a man's 
procession on his way to death. Make way for the 
executioners of the king, the doers of justice by be- 
heading of living and impaling of dead men. This is 
Charadutta, who bears the stake and the garland; 
he goes now on his way to death as a lamp goes out 
when it has not been replenished with oil. 

charadutta 

What are these crows, good Chandala, and why are 
they croaking about this place? 

second chandala 

They are before their time, sir; they wait on you. 
Stand out of the w^ay there, what is there for you to 

[ 193 ] 



THE TOY CART 

see but a tree that is to be cut down, a good man that 
is to be cut short by the axe of fate? 

CHARADUTTA 

The people look kindly on me; I am at least not 
shamed before their kind hearts, though I stand here 
like an ox to be slaughtered; they cannot help me in 
this life, but I can see that they pray that my fortune 
in my next life may be better than it has been in this. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Out of the way, sirs, back; what do you want to see? 
There are four things not to be looked at : Indra when 
he bends his bow, a cow when she gives birth to her 
calf, a shooting star, and a good man when he is leaving 
this life. But look you, brother, a hint, the whole 
city is under sentence; can the sky weep without 
a cloud? 

SECOND CHANDALA 

No, brother Goha, the sky cannot weep without a 
cloud, but this cloud is a cloud of women-folk, and the 
rain falls from their eyes, and cannot so much as lay 
the dust. 

CHARADUTTA 

Why do all these pity me and cry, Alas! poor Chara- 
dutta? I am to die, and not one of them can help me. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Let all men hear the proclamation of the king. First, 
let the drum be beaten. The drum is beaten. 
And now hear, all of ye. This is Charadutta, the son 
of Sagaradatta, the son of the Provost Vinayaddatta, 

[194] 



THE TOY CART 

by whom Vasantasena the courtesan has been robbed 
and murdered. The spoil has been found in his hands, 
and he has confessed his crime with his own mouth. 
He has been convicted and condemned to death in 
the name of King Palaka; so will the king punish all 
malefactors accursed in this life and the next. 

CHARADUTTA 

O Chandalas, how is it that your hands defile a name 
that has been made sacred to the gods, age after age, 
by priests about a sacred fire? But now, my friends, 
turn from me; they hide their faces in their cloaks. 
Once every stranger desired to be my friend! 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Every man loves him that is in prosperity, and him 
that is in adversity he forsakes. Does this surprise 
you, and yet you are a wise man.^^ 

CHARADUTTA 

O Maitreya, why does not my one friend come to fulfil 
my last wishes! 

SECOND CHANDALA 

Are you ready, sir, and if you are ready will you come 
a little further along .^^ 

VOICES [behind the scenes] 
Father! father! Charadutta! 

CHARADUTTA 

Chandalas, will you grant me one favour? 

[195] 



THE TOY CART 

FIRST CHANDALA 

What! will you take a favour from us? 

CHARADUTTA 

You are of the caste of the Chandalas, but you are 
gentler than the king, who is a Brahmin. Hear me, 
good friends. Let me see the face of my child before 

I die. 

THE VOICE [within] 

Father! 

FIRST CHANDALA 

It shall be done. Make way there: let him pass. 
This way, sir. 

MAiTREYA mokes his way through the crowd, leading 

ROHASENA. 

MAITREYA 

Quick, child, quick, or your father will be dead before 
we come to him. 

ROHASENA 

Father! father! 

CHARADUTTA 

My son! Alas, child, will you leave me as thirsty in 
the other world as I am now? Such little hands as 
yours, what food and drink can they offer upon my 
grave? 

MAITREYA 

Friend, is it too late to speak now? Let me speak, 
tell all, and save you. 

CHARADUTTA 

These Chandalas can take my life: would you take 
my honour? 

[ 196 ] 



THE TOY CART 

ROHASENA 

Where are you taking my father, you wicked Chan- 
dalas? 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Hark, ye, my boy, they who are born Chandalas are 
not the only ones. There are Chandalas who do evil 
to good men. 

ROHASENA 

Then why are you killmg my father? 

SECOND CHANDALA 

It is the king's order; it is his fault, not ours. 

ROHASENA 

Kill me and let my father go. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

A long life to you, my brave child. 

CHARADUTTA 

The essence of the world is mine: such treasure be- 
longs to the poor man as well as to the rich. I have 
one friend, and m him I shall live twice over. 

MAITREYA 

One friend indeed: here's another. Pray, master 
Chandalas, one body is as good as another to your 
trade: let my friend's go: you can have mine. 

[ 197 ] 



THE TOY CART 



CHARADUTTA 



What have I said? I thought adversity left a man 
without a friend, and here are two of them! 



FIRST CHANDALA 

Now then, stand back, all of you. What do you want 
to see now? A good man who has fallen into darkness, 
like a bucket of gold when the rope is broken and it 
falls into the well! 

CHARADUTTA 

They are going to beat the drum: it tells the time 
when I am to die. O child, if I had but something to 
leave you! I have only the cord of the Brahmin, and 
I will take it from my shoulder and put it over yours. 
It is not made of gold or jewels, but a Brahmin who 
wears the cord is the mate of the gods and can talk 
with them face to face. 

BOHASENA {jpomting to the jewels round 
charadutta's necli\ 

Father, give me back my jewels. 

CHARADUTTA 

They are not yours, dear child, and they are not mine. 
I cannot give them to you. 

ROHASENA 

But yes, they are mine, a lady gave them to me. 

CHARADUTTA 

What lady? 

[ 198 ] 



THE TOY CART 

ROHASENA 

I don't know, a beautiful lady. She put them into 
my toy cart because it wasn't the gold one. 

MAITREYA 

What is this! Tell me all about it, child! Quick! 
you shall be cleared of this charge after all, Chara- 
dutta ! 

ROHASENA \_crying~\ 

I don't know, I don't know. 

CHARADUTTA 

My friend, I begin to understand something of this 
mystery, but it is too late to matter, and now it only 
adds to my misery. Was not this, which has been 
part of the noose of fate in snaring me, but some 
lovely secret deed of Vasantasena, and Vasantasena is 
dead, and what does it all matter now? Say nothing, 
Maitreya, death is welcome, and now it will come with 
more sweetness. 

The drum is beaten on a sign from the chandalas, 
and they come nearer to charadutta, who is about 
to say farewell to his son. At the sound of the drum 
a 'passage is suddenly opened in the crowd, and 
armed men come forward, followed by samsthanaka. 
They fall bach; he comes insolently forward. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Why do you beat the death-drum before I am ready 
to look on my enemy dying? I was feasting in my 
palace, when I heard your voices, Chandalas, as harsh 

[199] 



THE TOY CART 

as a cracked bell, and the first beat of the death- 
drum. But the destruction of an enemy is a better 
feast than has ever been served in any palace. What 
a crowd has come together, and merely to see this 
man die ! If so many flock together to see this beggar 
die, how great a concourse would there be if it were 
a great personage, like myself, that was to be put to 
death. He is decked out for the slaughter like a 
young bull, he is turned to the south to die. But why 
is not the proclamation said over again? I would have 
it said over and over again, until everybody has heard 
it. I would have Charadutta say it over with his own 
mouth. Chandalas, why have you delayed the exe- 
cution so long.f^ 

FIRST CHANDALA 

My lord, we cannot both delay and hasten. If you 
would be quicker than we, that do but our trade by 
rote, why, sir, do it yourself. Will you have my axe, 
or my fellow's? [He lifts the axe high in the air. sams- 
THANAKA steps hack hurriedly.'} 

ROHASENA [tO SAMSTHANAKA] 

Kill me and let my father go. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Put down your axe, down, edge to the earth, not that 
way. Who is the child? 

SECOND CHANDALA 

He is the son of Charadutta. 

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THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA. 

Kill them both. 

CHARADUTTA 

Go home, my child. Who knows what this madman 
will do? Maitreya, take him with you into safety. 
He must live, and not be dishonoured by my shame. 

MAITREYA 

my friend, do you think that I mean to outlive you? 

CHARADUTTA 

Friend, you are alive, and no power forbids you to 
live. Do not cast away what is not yours to give or 
take. 

MAITREYA 

1 will put the child into a place of safety, and then, 
then I will come back and share your fate. [He falls 
at CHARADUTTA* s feet, embraces him, and is going to lead 
away the child.^ 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Stop ! I said, kill them both, father and son. 
CHARADUTTA Ufts his hauds in terror, 

FIRST CHANDALA 

The king's orders concerned the father, not the son. 
We carry out our orders. Off with you, boy! 

They thrust maitreya and rohasena away into 

the crowd. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

As you will. I am concerned only to do justice. But, 
as many here present look as if they do not believe 

[201] 



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that this crime was committed by Charadutta, I call 
upon him, as he is an honest man, to say now before 
them all: I, Charadutta, killed Vasantasena. He will 
not speak. Strike him, Chandalas, as if he were a 
drum, with your drum-sticks. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Are you not going to speak, Charadutta? 

CHARADUTTA 

Strike, if you will. Your axe will strike harder 
presently. I am afraid neither of you nor of death; 
only of one thing: that this thing may be remembered 
against me, and it may be said that I killed the woman 
whom I loved. 

SAMSTHANAKA 



Confess, confess. Speak the truth at last 



CHARADUTTA 

What shall I say that I may have peace in my death? 
That I am a malefactor, that I hated this woman, and 
that by me this woman . . . Let this man say the 
rest. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Was murdered. 

CHARADUTTA 

So be it. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Come: it is you who have to execute the prisoner. 

SECOND CHANDALA 

No, the turn is yours. 

[ 202 ] 



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FIRST CHANDALA 



Let us reckon. {They begin to calculate on their fingers!^ 
Well, if it is my turn I shall be in no hurry about it. 

SECOND CHANDALA 

Why so? 

FIRST CHANDALA 

I will tell you. My father, when about to depart 
this life to a better, being in the exercise of like func- 
tions with ours, a gentle-hearted stemman; my father 
said to me: Son, when you have a heading business 
in hand, go about it cautiously, deliberately, do nothing 
in a hurry. And why.? Because, said he, some good 
man may come forward and pay down the price of his 
head; or a son at the very next moment of time be 
born to the king, and a general pardon proclaimed; 
or an elephant may break loose, and the prisoner may 
get clean off in the confusion; or (who knows .f^) there 
may be a change of rulers, and everybody in prison 
be set at liberty. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

A change of rulers! What are you lingering over, 
Chandalas? To your work, sirs. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Have patience, my lord; we are reckoning which of us 
two is to do the work. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Is there an elephant on earth more slow-footed than 
justice? How long am I to wait on your pleasure? 
[_He walks up and down impatiently, ~\ 

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FIRST CHANDALA 



Noble Charadutta, we but do our duty, and duty must 
be done. Before you kneel down at this block, and 
after asking your pardon, is there anything you wish 
to think of or speak out? 

CHARADUTTA 

If virtue prevail in the world, I ask of the gods that 
my fair fame may some day be restored by Vasan- 
tasena, whether from heaven above or on this earth. 
Now do your duty. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Do you see this block? 

CHARADUTTA 

Too well. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Those that see it as close as you see it now have not 
much longer to live, [charadutta recoils. 2 Are you 
afraid, Charadutta? 

CHARADUTTA 

Of dishonour, not of death. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Sir, in heaven itself the sun and moon are not free 
from change and suffering: how should we, in this 
lower world, escape them? One man rises but to 
fall, another falls to rise; and the vesture of this 
carcase is at one time laid aside and taken up again 
at another. Lay these things to your heart, and be 

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THE TOY CART 

firm. My hand also shall be firm, and the axe shall 
fall but once. Now must the proclamation be made 
for the last tune. Goha, repeat it. 

SECOND CHANDALA 

This is Charadutta, the son of Sagaradatta, the son of 
the Provost Vinayaddatta, by whom Vasantasena the 
courtesan has been robbed and murdered. The spoil 
has been found in his hands, and he has confessed his 
crime with his own mouth. He has been convicted 
and condemned to death, and we are now to put him 
to death in the name of King Palaka: so will the king 
punish all malefactors, accursed in this life and in the 
next. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Kneel down: your neck so: sir, let me arrange your 
last comfort. 

He sets the head of charadutta carefully on the 
block. There has been a movement in the crowd, 
cries of "Make way!" and the mendicant friar 
leading vasantasena by the hand appears suddenly 
through the crowd, as charadutta, his head lying 
on the block says: 

CHARADUTTA 

The gods are mighty. 

mendicant 

Make way there, good people, in the name of charity. 

Make way ! 

The FIRST CHANDALA has raised his axe; at the stir 
in the crowd the second chandala arrests his 
arms. 

[205 ] 



THE TOY CART 

SECOND CHANDALA 

Hold. Someone is coming, it may be from the king. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

I see only a begging friar and a dishevelled woman. 

CRIES 

Make way there, make way! 

CHARADUTTA \^from the block} 

Good Chandala, I have composed myself for death. 
Make haste to end this waiting. 

VASANTASENA [crying from the crowd} 
Stop ! stop ! in the gods' name, stop ! 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Who is this woman that cries and runs like a wounded 
beast? 

VASANTASENA 

Stop ! it is I. It is I. It is Vasantasena. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Can this be Vasantasena? 

SECOND CHANDALA 

Charadutta seems to say so. 

CHARADUTTA has riscu from the blocJcy and stands 
swaying helplessly, vasantasena runs up to him 
and puts her arms round him as if to support him, 

[206] 



THE TOY CART 

VASANTASENA 

It is I, it is Vasantasena. Look at me. I am not too 
late? 

VOICES IN THE CROWD 

It is Vasantasena ! 

CHARADUTTA 

Are you alive or dead, Vasantasena? 

VASANTASENA 

I am alive. But you, but you? I have run, I have 
run, to save you. 

VOICES IN THE CROWD 

It is a miracle. Vasantasena is alive. 

CHARADUTTA 

I think we have both died, but you have brought me 
to life again. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

If the dead come to life, where shall I hide from the 
sight of them? And if she be not dead, where shall 
I hide from the sight of justice? [He turns to go. 
The CHANDALAS lay hold of him.'] 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Sir, you are to remain here. 

SAMSTHANAKA 

This to me, hound? Let me go, 

[ 207 ] 



THE TOY CART 

SECOND CHANDALA 

Our orders are from the king, and if this woman has 
come back from the dead, it is you that must say who 
sent her there. \iThey lay hold qf him.'] 

VASANTASENA 

I thought I had died for you, and it was hard, because 
I loved you with all my life; and is there any love in 
the grave? But you too, would you have died for me? 

CHARADUTTA 

Look, Vasantasena! are not these garlands woven for 
my death more like bridal garlands? Cannot the 
death-drums play marriage music as well? 

VASANTASENA 

Let me die again, only let me hear those words! But 
what is it they have done to you, and who is it that has 
sought your life? 

CHARADUTTA 

They said I had killed you, and for these jewels, which 
I wear now for punishment; your jewels. 

VASANTASENA 

Ah, the toy cart ! 

CHARADUTTA 

They have brought me through anguish to this joy. 

VASANTASENA [turning and catching sight of sams- 
THANAKA, shrieks:~\ 
The murderer! 

[ 208 ] 



THE TOY CART 

SAMSTHANAKA [trying to fall on his knees'] 
Forgive me, Vasantasena. 

The CHANDALAs hold him up so that he cannot go 
down on his knees. 

FIRST CHANDALA 

Stand up, sir, like a man. 

Again there is a stir in the crowd, and maitreya 
bursts through, almost breathless. 

MAITREYA 

Charadutta, you will be saved! I have come. . . • 
[Stops as he sees vasantasena.] 

CHARADUTTA 

Vasantasena has already saved me. 

MAITREYA 

This is a day of miracles. But hear, and not you alone, 
Charadutta, hear, all of you, Chandalas, guards, people: 
Aryaka is king, Palaka is killed, Aryaka reigns in his 
place ! Long live Aryaka ! 

Some in the crowd repeat it, others look at one 
another in doubt. 

Glory to Siva, glory to the god of battles! I hold the 
signet ring of Palaka, that Aryaka has taken off his 
finger. I bring it from Aryaka to Charadutta that he 
may not only be set free but that he may be next to 
Aryaka in his kingdom. 

[209] 



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SAMSTHANAKA 



Alas! woe is me, my brother-in-law is dead, and I am 
myseK no more than a dead man. 

MAITRETA 

Hold him, Chandalas, in the name of Aryaka. Guards 
of Samsthanaka, your master is a captive. Aryaka 
will be your master! 

GUARDS 

Long live Aryaka! 

CHARADUTTA 

O Maitreya, then it is not my life only that is saved 
but liberty itself. Let us give thanks to the gods. 

VOICES 

Long live Aryaka! Long live Charadutta! 

CHARADUTTA 

And now, Vasantasena. ... 

VOICES 

Down with the murderer! Send him after Palaka! 
He would have killed Charadutta! 

SAMSTHANAKA 

Charadutta, save me! I have no hope but in you. 
{Breaks away from the Chandalas and grovels before 
him.2 Save me! 

[ 210 ] 






THE TOY CART 

VOICES 

Kill him ! kill him ! Give him to us. 

VASANTASENA [taking the garland from chara- 
dutta's neck and throwing it over samsthanaka's] 

Take the death-garland! 

SAMSTHANAKA 

I die, I die. I kiss your feet, most noble Charadutta, 
I kiss the dust before your feet. Only save me from 
death ! 

VOICES 

Give him to us. 

CHARADUTTA 

Have I power over this man.^ 

VOICES 

Yes, yes. 

CHARADUTTA 

Will you do with him in everything as I bid you? 

VOICES 

Yes, yes. 

CHARADUTTA 

Then I bid you with all due haste. . . . 

VOICES 

To kill him. 

CHARADUTTA 

No, to set him free. 

VOICES 

Let him be killed, let him be killed. 

[211] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Vasantasena, why is he to be set free? 

VASANTASENA [taking the garland from the neck of 
SAMSTHANAKA, and throwing it on the ground~] 
Samsthanaka, your punishment shall be the mercy of 
Charadutta. 

CHARADUTTA 

Vasantasena has said it. Loose him and let him go. 

SAMSTHANAKA [rising'] 
Gods! I am alive again. [He goes out^ 

MENDICANT 

After all I did well to help a woman, though it is 
against the rules of my order. 

VASANTASENA 

This was my helper, when I was nearly dead. He led 
me into safety. 

CHARADUTTA 

What shall we do for this good friar? 

MENDICANT 

Give me leave to go begging about the world in the 
old way: my masters, save me and your own selves 
from the misery of riches ! [He goes out.'} 

VOICES 

They are coming this way! Aryaka and the soldiers 
are coming this way! Let us go and see them. 

All run out, leaving charadutta alone with vasan- 
tasena and MAITREYA. 

[212] 



THE TOY CART 

CHARADUTTA 

Shall we follow these children? They go to see a new 
thing, having forgotten the thing now past. But here 
is a man and woman who have seen death, each for 
the sake of the other; and only by life can death be 
forgotten. When we find Aryaka we will bid him to 
our marriage-feast. 

VASANTASENA [kissing his hand] 
My lord! 



CURTAIN 



[213] 



